Welcome to Berlin!

IHEC Successfully holds Annual Meeting 2013 in German Capital.

From 10-12 November 2013 the historical “Kaiserin Friedrich-Haus”, located in the heart of Berlin on the famous Charité campus, became the venue for IHEC scientists and funding agency members from around the globe. With Germany having joined the consortium last year, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) had the pleasure to host this year’s annual meeting and to welcome 200 participants to Berlin.

IHEC can look back on a successful past year: “It was only a year ago at our meeting in Seoul that we saw for the first time what all the full member countries were planning to do. With all their mapping centers up and running, we had the first chance to coordinate our activities as a group and to set our reference standards. Now, a year later, there has been incredible progress”, Eric Marcotte, Chair of the IHEC Executive Committee, commented on the dynamic evolution of IHEC in the last months.

The three day meeting offered a rich conference programme including country updates, workgroup sessions and reports, high-level public statements as well as a premiere: The official meeting part was followed by the first “IHEC Science Days”, a scientific symposium which provided a selection of talks by internationally renowned scientists on their latest work and findings. After fruitful strategic discussions concerning the path forward for IHEC, the world-class symposium turned the spotlight to cutting-edge science and current hot topics in epigenomics research.

“With the IHEC Science Days we wanted to share the IHEC spirit of mutual cooperation and joint achievements with the research community at large – also outside IHEC”, Jörn Walter, coordinator of DEEP and head of this year’s local organizing team, explained the idea behind the IHEC Science Days, whose doors were open for everyone interested in epigenomics.

After an inspiring conference the IHEC community now looks forward to jointly moving forward and come together for the next annual meeting in Vancouver.

Presentations from the conference and additional pictures are now available for IHEC members on the Intranet.