“It was a great experience to finally meet with all the other ESRs and attend together interesting lectures on kidney physiopathology and on cutting-edge innovations in kidney research. The visit to the dialysis unit and the meeting with patients with chronic kidney disease was also a valuable moment of the training.”
Mara Lauriola
“Our latest training event in Utrecht has been a very fruitful experience, the different talks focused on kidney physiology and innovative in vitro models to better model disease and understand the cross-talk between the kidney and other organs (especially the one about assembling together different organs on a chip) were very stimulating. Plus, we finally got to meet all the PhD students within the consortium! The visit to Nutricia was one of the highlights of this event, the open discussion that we could have with some of the employees was really insightful, since we were able to get a taste of what it's like to work for a big company, and how research performed at university differs from it. Also, the fact that we could talk with a CKD patient was very useful and motivating, as sometimes it's easy to lose focus on the final goal of our projects: ameliorating the life of CKD patients.
As for the social events planned, the visit to the brewery and all the activities that we had planned with the rest of the ESRs were really nice and allowed us to really connect!”
Blanca Pina-Beltrán
“The training activity in Utrecht was a great opportunity to learn about kidney physiology and its changes during chronic kidney disease (CKD). Since I work with animal models in my project, it was valuable for me to get to know the clinicians' and CKD patients' perspectives on CKD life impact and CKD treatment. Moreover, modern models of CKD (organoids, organ-on-chip) and state-of-art techniques (laboratory and bioinformatical) were explained by specialists.
The crucial element of the training was the integration of consortium members. Time spent together allowed us to build friendly relationships and exchange project-related experiences. It will enhance the cooperation in the consortium.”
Piotr Batrochowski