4th IMMERGE Wide Training Event
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From September 15th to 18th, 2026, the IMMERGE consortium gathered in Hinxton and Cambridge for four days of scientific training, knowledge exchange and networking, bringing together Doctoral Candidates, and supervisors from across the network.
Hosted at Hinxton Hall at the Wellcome Genome Campus (UK), the meeting combined scientific workshops with consortium meetings, career-oriented activities and opportunities for the IMMERGE community to connect beyond their individual research projects.
A network get-together to kick things off: The meeting opened on September 15th with a series of consortium meetings. The afternoon closed with talks by IMMERGE Principal Investigators Klaus Warnatz and Raffaella Di Micco, before the whole group came together for a networking dinner.
A week of hands-on scientific training: The scientific programme continued with the Bioinformatic Analysis in Transcriptional Regulation Workshop, designed to strengthen the Doctoral Candidates’ skills in analysing and interpreting omics datasets.
Across September 16th and 17th, the programme combined expert scientific talks with hands-on bioinformatics sessions, allowing the Doctoral Candidates to work directly with approaches relevant to transcriptional regulation and omics data analysis.
The workshop also included a visit to the Wellcome Sanger Institute, led by Jack Monaghan, giving the Doctoral Candidates the opportunity to experience one of the world’s leading genomics research environments. The scientific sessions featured talks by Elisa Laurenti, Muzlifah Haniffa, Emma Davenport, and Roser Vilarrasa.
From the laboratory to future careers: Scientific training was complemented by activities designed to expose the Doctoral Candidates to different research environments and career paths.
On September 17th, the group travelled to Cambridge for a satellite event at Jesus College. The session featured talks from Luigi Aloia, Associate Director at AstraZeneca, and María Abad from Altos Labs, offering an opportunity to hear perspectives from researchers working in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors. The day concluded with a team-building activity in Cambridge.
These activities formed an important complement to the scientific programme, encouraging the Doctoral Candidates to look beyond their individual projects and explore the different professional environments in which their research skills can be applied.
Finishing with scientific writing: The final day focused on another essential skill for early-career researchers: scientific communication.
During the Scientific Writing Workshop, held on September 18th, the Doctoral Candidates took part in a full day of training dedicated to developing their scientific writing skills through workshop sessions and practical activities.
Four days, one network: From omics and bioinformatics to scientific writing, career perspectives and team building, the Cambridge meeting brought together several key elements of the IMMERGE training programme.
More than a series of workshops, the four-day meeting was an opportunity for the Doctoral Candidates and the wider consortium to learn from each other, exchange ideas and strengthen the collaborative network at the heart of IMMERGE.
