It was a pleasure to be the host of the 11^th EU-LIFE Community Meeting at CeMM in Vienna. Giulio Superti-Furga, Anita Ender and several CeMM representatives welcomed Marta Agostinho and the EU-LIFE office team, and the Board of Directors and Working Group members of the 15 EU-LIFE partner institutes.

The official EU-LIFE Community Meeting took place on Thursday, 25.4.2024, with more than 100 participants, contributing to 9 different Working Groups (Strategy, Core Facilities, Gender Equality and Diversity, Grants and Funding, IT, Human Resources, Training and Recruitment, Science Communications, and Tech Transfer). 7 out of 9 WG have already met on Wednesday, 24.4.2024 at CeMM to exchange best practices. These highly motivating and fruitful discussions continued the day after, and also went on at the EU-LIFE Utopia Conference on Artificial Intelligence on Friday, 26.4.2024 at the House of Industry, organized by the teams of Andre Rendeiro and Jörg Menche.

Our special thanks goes to Helga Nowotny and Heinz Faßmann who joined a discussion round on "FP10 and the future of science" with the EU-LIFE Directors and Main Representatives of the 15 institutes. Both hold numerous leadership roles on academic boards and research policy councils: Helga Nowotny was founding member of the ERC and is a member of the Austrian Council for Sciences, Technology and Innovation, and Heinz Faßmann, President of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, CeMM’s mother organization, has been appointed as member of the European Commission's Expert Adviser Group for the Framework Programme 10 in December 2023.

EU-LIFE members profit from the experience and knowledge of the partners, have common principles of research excellence, and contribute to European research policy. There is a constant exchange of information (in person or via regular online meetings), mutual trust and support actions, and important discussions with stakeholders.

EU-LIFE publishes its views in position papers ranging from policy statements to detailed analysis and concrete recommendations with the overall goal to support and strengthen research in Europe. Position papers (https://eu-life.eu/newsroom/publications) such as the EU-LIFE Charter of Independent Life Science Research Institutes, the COARA Action Plan, on EU-LIFE’s Guiding Principles for FP10 and a vision for the European Innovation Council (EIC), as well as EU-LIFE recommendations for MSCA Actions were already launched earlier this year. More to come.

Thanks again to all participants of the EU-LIFE Community Meeting, to the Directors for their commitment to the EU-LIFE alliance, and to the CeMM team and the EU-LIFE office for supporting such an event in Vienna!

Have a look at the Picture Galleries of the different working group activities #EULIFE2024, the discussion round with Helga Nowotny and Heinz Faßmann, the nice social event with the band #FRINC at the Arena Wien, and the EU-LIFE Utopia Conference on AI 2024. 

More information about EU-LIFE: https://eu-life.eu/