Helle Praetorius
Aarhus University, Denmark

Bellamkonda K. Kishore
University of Utah Health & VA Medical Center, USA

https://doi.org/10.36866/pn.110.18a

To reverse the order and start with the conclusion, the H3 symposia sponsored by The Physiological Society are an outstanding tool for focused presentations and discussions with an emphasis on truly understanding the ongoing research and networking. As the organisers, we strongly recommend this format, particularly to facilitate new upcoming research areas and to join efforts regarding certain research challenges.

As the organisers, we used this informal symposium format to invite scientists with interesting stories in adjacent fields, and the result was an extremely constructive atmosphere and extensive networking on upcoming projects. Our symposium topic was deliberately interdisciplinary, joining obesity and renal research with purinergic signalling as a common denominator. We could, thus, have inputs to topics from local tissue regulation to overall cerebral regulation of body homeostasis. This allowed new insights in the complicated phenotypes of global transgenic models. For this to truly work, we used the symposium format to have longer talks with extensive time for discussion and just regular questions. This in turn allowed the time needed to understand the complexity of the various topics in depth – which is the essence of physiology and pathophysiology. This format clearly has an appeal, and we found it very easy to lure engaged scientists to London in January from a large variety of places.

When organising a symposium, The Physiological Society offers excellent support with a genuine understanding of the busy schedule of scientists and the difficulty in planning an out-of-town symposium. The Society has clear policies that one has to comply to in the planning but the result was a very harmonious, balanced symposium with an extremely constructive atmosphere. We find that this type of symposium covers a completely different kind of need than larger international meetings, which cannot be supplied by smaller interest-group symposia as pre-meetings. The Physiological Society has to be commended for their effort, which really is an inspirational tribute to physiology by strengthening global scientific collaboration and project development. We would like to use this opportunity to again thank all speakers and contributors for their outstanding engagement for this event.