VPH2014 in Norway

Two bids were received for organising the upcoming VPH conference scheduled in 2014: one from the University of Zaragoza in Spain and one from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway.

First of all the VPH Institute wishes to publically thank both the participants: this competition is a really positive sign of the growing importance this conference is getting for our community.

Despite the high-level quality of the both proposals, the Board of Directors of the VPH Institute decided to award the bid to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

NTNU is Norway's second largest university, with an annual budget of about US $800 million. The University graduates about 3,300 students every year, 2/3 of which are master's or PhD candidates and it has the primary responsibility for higher engineering education in Norway. The University has 53 departments, seven major campuses, including core facilities for genome sequencing, metabolomics and proteomics, and it owns over 100 laboratories. It also has three important facilitating technology streams underlying its R&D and education: ICT, nanotechnology and biotechnology.

But there are also some additional aspects that played in favour of the Norwegian bid:

• NTNU is in possession of the biobank HUNT (The Nord-Trøndelag health study).  This is one of the largest health studies ever performed an consists of a unique database of personal and family medical histories collected during three intensive studies: http://www.ntnu.edu/hunt
• The Faculty of Medicine, official host of  the VPH2014 conference, is integrated with the St. Olavs Hospital in Trondheim, one of the Europe’s most modern university hospitals, focused on creating value through knowledge generation, research and innovation and the development of technological solutions that are brought into clinical practical use
• NTNU operates in partnership with SINTEF, the largest independent research organization in Scandinavia: www.sintef.no 

These important assets put NTNU in a strategic position for strongly contributing to the future of the VPH Initiative.

 “We are thrilled by being given responsibility for organizing the forthcoming VPH2014 conference. NTNU and SINTEF are in very good position to contribute substantially to the VPH vision, and this conference is of great help to start filling this ambition with factual content” says Professor Omholt, newly appointed Director of “NTNU Biotechnology – the Confluence of Life Sciences, Mathematical Sciences and Engineering”.

The conference will take place from Sept 9th, to Sept 12th, 2014, in Trodheim by the Clarion Hotel & Congress. A very tentative draft of the programme is available for you to view, but its final form will be decided by the Scientific Committee where the VPHI Board of Directors play a major role. The overall goal of the programme is to enforce further integration of the VPH Community and share common goals and intellectual standards, avoiding parallel sessions before late afternoon and increasing poster presentations. Also the conference will aim to get more involvement from the experimental physiology, the functional genomics and the bioinformatics communities, and those from the engineering and mathematical communities that might consider joining the VPH mission.

• More information about Trondheim