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Dear Colleagues and Friends!
Dear Marie José!
With spring finally in full swing I am pleased to address you with this letter on behalf of the complete Council. At the beginning of this year we welcomed several new members on Council and I am grateful to my colleagues investing their free time to further advance our activities and services for the digestive health community. A particular warm welcome to Yasmijn van Herwaarden as Young Talent Group Representative and I am also pleased that Nurdan Tözün now joins our up-coming Council meetings on behalf of the Equality & Diversity Task Force.
We have been impressed that so many of you have followed our invitation and shared your views on the current Strategic Plan and your thoughts for future directions. The input will be of great help to Council to shape the next Strategic Plan and for further discussions during our Strategy Day with leadership of our Ordinary Specialist Societies and the Young Talent Group, planned for June 30.
During the past weeks, our home base, the House of European Gastroenterology in Vienna, was buzzing with various council and committee meetings. We hosted 2 pan-European consortia, which are in the exploratory phase of applications to Horizon 2020 and supported by UEG through our Horizon 2020 Application Support scheme. Thirty young enthusiastic investigators moved in to the HEG for the three-day YIM (Young Investigators Meeting) in March to learn about how to do research and write scientific papers. We are proud that the community enrolling in our online courses is rapidly growing and we were thrilled to welcome the 4,000th online course user last month.
We encourage you to inform active, well-established researchers about our Research Prize, which supports a future scientific research project from early stage to successful conclusion with € 100,000. Application is open until May 1.
I am also delighted to share with you that our stakeholder engagement in Brussels is gaining full speed. Next month we will again organise the Digestive Health Month with various events to raise awareness of a variety of digestive diseases amongst the public and policymakers. On May 15 we will launch the Members of the European Parliament Digestive Health Group, a platform of ambassadors for Digestive Health from the European Parliament. Please be part of the event by joining the twitter discussion using #MEP_DHG.
We are also looking for colleagues interested in working with UEG and further developing our activities. Positions on UEG Council and on the National Societies Committee will be elected on occasion of UEG Week Vienna 2018 and I invite you to nominate your candidates for the positions of Treasurer Elect, Chair of the Research Committee and Chair Elect of the National Societies Committee, as well as member on the National Societies Committee by September 14. UEG actively promotes equality and diversity throughout our organisation and activities, particularly with regard to gender, race and nationality. We therefore would particularly welcome applications from women and from countries usually under-represented on UEG committees. More information on all up-coming positions is available on our website.
The call for applications for the position of Editor-in-Chief of the UEG Journal is open until April 30. As UEG has great ambitions to further improve the impact of UEG Journal by publishing cutting-edge research of outstanding quality, we see our responsibility to find the right candidate to build up on the success of the predecessor Jan Tack.
Preparations for this year’s UEG Week in Vienna are running smoothly and we are again anticipating a very exciting week of scientific advances and updates from leading digestive health experts. Make sure you and your fellows submit their best work in time until April 20 to present and share their research with the international GI community.
Wishing you all a wonderful and happy Spring!
Yours sincerely
Paul Fockens
UEG President 2018-2019
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