Two intensive days of presentations and planning marked the official launch of the HEAP project on 13 and 14 January 2020. Held at Karolinska Institutet, the home of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and Sweden’s largest medical university, the meeting was a welcome opportunity for representatives from the 11 HEAP partners to begin the work of coordinating the first year of the 5-year project.
Topics on the agenda included an overview of each of HEAP’s 12 work packages, followed by workshops to formalize the synergies between them, and finally to define the deliverables for the first year.
Opening the meeting, Professor Joakim Dillner, the HEAP Project Coordinator, said, “I am delighted to welcome you, our colleagues and friends from across Europe, to Stockholm. The different elements of HEAP are a fine balance of data, research and technology, which makes careful coordination and collaborative working essential to achieving our goals.”
Ms Anouk Berger, Head of the Education and Training Group at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and leader of the Education and Dissemination Work Package, commented, “The next few months will be focused on building the infrastructure for communication and setting out ways of working. At IARC we will be building the project website, and our colleagues at the Medical University of Graz will be producing the Data Management Plan, supported by legal experts from the MLC Foundation and technical experts from CSC – IT Center for Science.”
