At Harvard Medical School, 17-18 January, researchers and clinicians from the university joined colleagues from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne for the third annual Bertarelli Symposium.
This year’s meeting coincided with the formal renewal of the partnership between the Bertarelli Foundation and the two academic institutions in the form of the Bertarelli Program in Translational Neuroscience and Neuroengineering, established in 2010. The new gift – totalling several million dollars – will help to “continue to inspire neuroengineering advances by bringing basic and clinical investigations together with experts in device design for sensory and other neurologic systems.” The Program’s defining aims are collaboration and innovation.
The 2014 Symposium was entitled Neuroengineering:Molecules, Minds and Machines and it provided an opportunity to hear and discuss current efforts in translational neuroscience, not least initial findings from the first six research grants awarded through the Bertarelli Program in 2011.
Read more here about the programme for the 2014 Symposium, including case-studies of the pioneering research that is being carried out.
Commenting on the Symposium and the Bertarelli Program, Ernesto Bertarelli said:
“The strength of this program is in what it achieves as a whole—facilitating and encouraging scientists and medics from wholly different disciplines, backgrounds and, of course, locations to work together. I look, for example, at the work being done on paralysis and hearing problems and am heartened and excited by the fact that we have different research programs, from the two universities, working together, combining specialties and all with a common goal. It is how science should be, I believe.”
David Corey, director of the program at Harvard, said:
“In designing the Bertarelli Program, we needed to decide what neuroengineering really means. It combines engineering, neurology and neuroscience, yet it becomes more than the sum of its parts by focusing on new solutions for neurological and psychiatric disorders and seeking neuroscience knowledge that will be useful for patient care immediately rather than down the road. In just two years, it is clear the program is delivering on that vision.”
Image ©Steve Gilbert