Whether in a new job or in a social setting, it is relatively
easy to make a good first impression. What is more difficult is
to be consistent – to fulfil your role well day after day, year
after year, to be consistently a good colleague or friend, and
to continue to be creative and flexible.
The European Life Scientist Organization (ELSO) made
a good impression when it held its first international congress
in Geneva in 20001,2. Now, with a second, even more successful
congress (held in Nice, France this summer) behind it, this ‘grass-roots’
organization of European researchers is set to consolidate its
activities and expand into more diverse and ambitious projects.
‘Grass roots’ means that ELSO is an organization of
individual scientists – those involved with carrying out or directing
research going on at the bench. Unlike alliances like the Federation
of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS) or the European Cell
Biology Organization (ECBO), its members are individual scientists,
not national societies.
ELSO was created in 1999 by an ad hoc group of eminent
molecular cell biologists3 who saw the need for a Europe-wide
society for molecular life scientists. Largely the brainchild
of its current President, Finnish cell biologist Kai Simons, ELSO
was modelled on the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB).
Like the ASCB, its main raison d’être, in the first instance,
is to mount a large annual international conference on European
soil covering cell biology and all of the life science disciplines
that are now closely affiliated to it.
But ELSO plans to be more than simply a conference
organizer. Its other important goal is to become a forum through
which the molecular life science community in Europe can communicate
both within itself and, perhaps more importantly, with national
and European science policy makers. Just as the ASCB and other
American scientific societies have had an important voice in influencing
science funding and policy in the USA over the past decade, ELSO
aims to represent the interests of its members to national and
European governments. It can do so by bringing important issues
into the public arena for debate and by lobbying the politicians
who decide how much money will be spent, where and on which particular
aspects of research and development. It is already doing so not
only through the ELSO congresses but also through its e-magazine,
The ELSO Gazette, and its Career Development Committee.
An annual meeting
Those of you who are lucky enough to participate in
many scientific meetings and conferences around the globe may
feel that there is no need for another large conference. But if
we are to create a sense of community among European researchers,
which is an essential prerequisite for a united voice, we must
bring people together – young scientists even more so than their
senior colleagues. The ELSO congresses aim to keep costs low (by
avoiding expensive private conference organizers) so making them
accessible to students and postdocs, and to create an environment
that attracts young and more established researchers alike.
As well as an impressive array of international plenary
speakers, the poster sessions are a central and crucial component
of ELSO meetings. Poster sessions are the ideal place for researchers
who are just setting out on their careers to present their work,
and for group leaders and department heads to scout for new talent.
A fruitful collaboration may begin through that interesting discussion
with the young researcher across the aisle, or an invitation to
apply for a new job could come from the big shot who stopped to
pose you that difficult question.
In fact, there is a need for a large European meeting
that is accessible to the broadest spectrum of our colleagues.
An exciting annual meeting will provide an important stimulus
for international collaboration, for the mixing of ideas and the
mobility of individuals that is desperately needed, especially
in the smaller European nations. For many European university
departments and small institutes, it is simply not possible to
provide a seminar programme that exposes their researchers to
the best, broadest and most exciting molecular cell biology. The
ELSO annual congress can help to fill this void and establish
a stronger research base throughout Europe.
An annual meeting can also provide a much-needed environment
for European suppliers to exhibit their products to an important
audience. The exhibition halls of big meetings provide a useful
service to industry as well as to scientists, and they offer an
important source of revenue to support the meetings, which is
in turn essential if the registration costs are to remain low,
to allow many to attend. Until now, there has been little opportunity
for companies in Europe to reach their customers through large
meetings; there is nothing in Europe that approaches the fairs
at the big American society meetings. Indeed, European companies
tend to lack this culture of exhibiting at meetings.
To provide a better service to European companies
and the European offices of international companies, ELSO is setting
up an Industrial Board that will liase with these businesses to
make future ELSO congresses more attractive for exhibitors.
The first two ELSO congresses have made an important
first impression. The task now is to sustain that positive energy
and develop it into a consistently impressive event that is a
‘must’ in the annual calendar of European molecular life scientists
young and old alike.
The programme for the third congress, in Dresden (Germany)
in 2003, is already on the drawing board. In 2004, the meeting
is planned to return to Geneva and after that to rotate through
these three European centres, making the administration more efficient
than if it were held in a different city each year.
e-magazine
If ELSO is to maintain its momentum between each conference
it needs a mechanism of communication and appropriate ‘executive’
arms. The ELSO Gazette, a bimonthly electronic magazine, is ELSO’s
main means of communication4. The e-magazine reports on European
news and events and carries features on various topics of relevance
to molecular life scientists. It also publishes mini reviews of
papers published by researchers in Europe (these written exclusively
by European researchers) and longer reviews by European scientists.
The ELSO Gazette is also a hub for the exchange of
ideas. In its leading Editorial it lays out opinion and policy,
and in its Forum section it publishes ‘letters’ from its readers.
It provides a free searchable advertising service for jobs and
for conferences and courses in Europe. And there are several other
useful features like a short page of links to the ‘essential’
journals and a searchable database of members’ e-mail addresses.
The ELSO Gazette uses professional journalists to
write the news and many of the feature articles. It is the only
scientific magazine that is wholly focussed on European science.
The Career Development Committee
ELSO’s first ‘executive arm’ – the means through which
it is attempting to lobby science policy makers, to provoke debate
and to inform scientists about issues that influence their science
and their careers – is its Career Development Committee (CDC).
The CDC is composed of a group of around a dozen scientists,
from both junior and senior levels5. Its chairperson is Daniela
Corda, the Head of the Department of Cell Biology and Oncology
at Consorzio Mario Negri Sud, a privately funded research institute
at Santa Maria Imbaro (Italy).
At the first open meeting of the CDC at ELSO2000 in
Geneva, which was attended by over 100 scientists, the discussion
was geared to how to improve the career structure for European
scientists. One theme that emerged was that there is a gaping
hole in the career ladder at the point where experienced and able
postdoctoral researchers are looking to establish their own independent
research groups. There is going to be a massive shortfall in the
number of independent group leaders in many European countries
as the wave of researchers hired in the 1960s and 1970s come up
to retirement. And at the moment Europe is doing little to train
junior researchers to fill these posts.
At a time when the European Commission’s sixth Framework
Programme (FP6) was being drafted in 2001, the CDC decided to
lobby those national members of the European Parliament (MEPs)
who sit on the Committee on Industry, External Trade, Research
and Energy – the committee that is largely responsible for
parliamentary approval for the framework programme as laid out
by the Commission. The CDC informed ELSO’s members about the issues
at stake, and supplied each member with the name and address of
his or her relevant national MEPs as well as an example letter,
urging the MEPs to support funding for a ‘Career Development Award’
in FP6.
This award, the CDC described, could be based on the
successful national grants operating in Switzerland, Germany and
the UK to fund talented senior postdocs in tenure-track positions
that allow them to establish their first independent research
team. ELSO was not the only organization to propose this idea
– the Max Planck Society and others were pushing similar ideas.
At ELSO 2002 in Nice, the CDC this time brought together
top-level policy makers from the European Commission, the Human
Frontiers Science Programme and the European Molecular Biology
Organization to describe new funding opportunities for postdocs
and junior independent scientists. In this meeting, which drew
a massive audience of around 400 people, Raffaele Liberali of
the Commission’s Directorate General for Research talked about
the final plans for FP6. We do not know how much influence the
ELSO CDC’s campaign had on FP6, but what Liberali described to
us is a much more deliberate attempt by the Commission to provide
coherent funding from graduate student to independent group leader
level, including grants for junior group leaders that come very
close to the Career Development Awards ELSO was pushing for.
The CDC will continue its lobbying activities whenever
it feels it can wield an influence with science policy makers
and politicians, whether in Brussels or at the national level.
Another of the CDC’s activities is to award a prize
for a junior independent researcher in Europe at each of its meetings.
The winner should normally be within ten years of obtaining his
or her PhD, must be working in Europe and must have spent a significant
part of their career in Europe. This Early Career Award at ELSO
2000 went to Elisa Izaurralde from the European Molecular Biology
Laboratory in Heidelberg (Germany), and this year was awarded
to Maria Blasco of the National Centre of Biotechnology in Madrid
(Spain).
Important issues
ELSO is just starting out. The attendance and atmosphere
at the first two meetings have shown the need for a large congress
on European soil, and demonstrated that ELSO is able to mount
an exciting, relevant and successful event. But there is a long
way to go to before ELSO becomes the voice in Europe that represents
all molecular life scientists.
We need to learn how best to reach those who walk
the corridors of power and make them listen to us. We need to
reach the very many molecular life scientists in Europe who do
not yet know about the organization. And we need to learn how
to get these scientists talking – at the ELSO meetings, through
the CDC and in the pages and forum space of The ELSO Gazette.
We need to find a way to get the grass-roots scientists in all
the nations of Europe to care about their colleagues in other
countries and in other disciplines, and to believe that small
actions on their behalf can make a big difference to the overall
environment for science in Europe.
