Within the next decade, pharmacogenomics, pharmacoepigenetics and individualised medicines will be amongst the most challenging topics. International competitive research activities in these fields need optimised computational tools for data mining, data management and transformation of data to knowledge. These needs are clearly expressed in the Strategic Research Agenda of the Innovative Medicines Initiative. EUROPIN links 6 Universities from 5 European Countries to develop a structured, highly interconnected training through research PhD program on the efficient and innovative use of information technologies and computational approaches in the drug discovery, design and development processes. Partners contributing are the University of Vienna, the Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona), the Gdansk University of Technology, the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, the University of Parma, and the University of Perugia.
At the Parma consortium meeting in May also the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam expressed its interest to join the network once the program is in place. This was highly appreciated by the consortium as it shows that not only the program developed is of high interest and the implementation is of high quality, but also might be seen as the first sign of a successful dissemination strategy.
The network will accept at maximum 10 students per year. Each PhD-student will have a local supervisor and one co-supervisors from the partner institutions. Additionally, a member from the Scientific Advisory Board, which is composed of 5 leading experts in the field coming from Industry or SMEs , will also contribute to the PhD-training program. The five scientists will act as core mentoring group setting up a personal career and development plan together with the student. Furthermore, also the research topic is designed in a way to fit into the research priorities of the two supervisors from Academia. Special attention will be given to a complementarity of methods and technologies. Each PhD-student spends at least 3 months of his/her 3 years period at the research groups of his/her co-supervisor. This ensures that the students gain broad technical experience without leaving the concrete research topic of his/her thesis.
An innovative aspect of the proposed training program will be the extensive use of internet technology for documentation, supervision, and scientific discussions. Thus, the PhD-students will use web-based e-notebooks, which will be hosted on a secure web site accessible only to the supervisors, researchers and members of the Scientific Advisory Board. At least once a month a video session will be held, where the students have to report their progress. These meetings will constitute an integral part of the training and provide both students and supervisors with the overall expertise of the scientists involved. This will ensure broadest use of the experience of all scientists involved in the network and thus guarantee a maximum of benefit for the students.
Big efforts will be made to give the participating students a broad range of enabling skills. Besides local activities implemented on the respective host institutions (language courses, application procedures to national grant agencies, local career tracks, gender mainstreaming) each of the three scientific retreats held during the training period will devote one full day to training of complementary skills. These will include scientific writing and presentation techniques, European funding possibilities for research projects, successful grant applications, successful job applications, establishment and management of a research lab and entrepreneurial spirit. Special attention will be drawn to gender issues to promote women for scientific careers.
The following joint training events will be organized:
-) EUROPIN Summer School (Sept. 13–18, 2009, Vienna):
Each second year the Vienna School on Drug Design, which currently is an EFMC sponsored School organised jointly by the Austrian Pharmaceutical Society and the Austrian Chemical Society, will act as the official EUROPIN Summer School. The Summer School starts on Sunday evening with an inaugural lecture. During the following week there will be 4-5 lectures in the morning, a joint lunch, a lecture given by a representative of a software company and hands on sessions. On Friday afternoon the 5-10 PhD students accepted for the EUROPIN programme will have to present their master thesis and PhD concept. The hands on sessions are limited to 50 people. Preference will be given to students and to scientists from EFMC Members. For the 2009 edition the hot topic covered was decided to be:
multitarget profiling and Pharmacoinformatics
Registration is open, please visit http://summerschool.europin.at
-) Annual Scientific Retreat
Each spring the PhD-students, their supervisors and the SAB will spend 2-3 days in a small resort for a scientific retreat. On days one and two the students will present and discuss the actual status of their work. During the retreat also the plan for the next will be agreed between the student and his/her supervisors. Day three will be devoted to training in enabling skills. After the retreat a short written report is provided to the PhD-student and discussed with the primary supervisor.
-) Pharmacoinformatics Challenge:
The challenge will be organised at the end of the training period (year 3) in analogy to the very successful InfoBioMed Challenge. The PhD-students will be split into two groups and work as a research team on a problem which is defined by the scientific advisory board. The Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) consists of 5 industrial scientists, which guarantees that the problem given is of industrial relevance and close to a real case study. At the end of the week the two teams will present their possible solution to the SAB and the supervisors. The proposed outcomes will be thoroughly discussed and the SAB members will give clear feedback on the approaches and methods used. In individual personal meetings the SAB members will also discuss with the respective students their strengths and weaknesses with respect to employability in a pharmaceutical company
For successfully completing the program, students need to provide a thesis written in English, will have at least 3 publications (one as first author) in international, peer reviewed journals, and will have a thesis defense with at participation of at least one international referee.
For further information and application visit www.europin.at
Gerhard Ecker, project coordinator
