Dr. Alex Cloherty
Bio:
Alex Cloherty is a Canadian award-winning science communicator. In 2016, she moved all the way from Canada to Utrecht to do her Master’s in Infection & Immunity, in which she also became the chair of the 2017 I&I Symposium: I&I Global Health Politicised. After obtaining her PhD in Immunology in 2023 from the University of Amsterdam, she chose to leave academia and follow a science communication career path. Aside from her studies, she started her Microbial Mondays Blog as a Master student which has grown to have over 100 blog entries. Now, Alex is an ambassador for the TOPX Network for women in life sciences as well as a marketing communications specialist for Oncode Accelerator. She strongly believes that science can only have a positive impact when it is well communicated and then critically understood.
Title: Master Manipulators vs. Creative Communicators
To outsmart the cunning infectious agents and non-communicable diseases you’ve learned about throughout your Master program, human collaboration and shared understanding is essential. That means that effective communication skills are a must-have to overcome these “master manipulators” – and whatever career path you take after your Master degree will involve science communication to some extent. If you stay in the lab, you’ll likely have to explain your findings to your boss, your students, fellow experts, and experts in adjacent fields. If you opt for a career off of the bench, you may need to package in-depth scientific details into messages that are understandable to politicians, regulators, funders, or other stakeholder populations. In this workshop, you will learn best practices for science communication, hear about different career paths involving science communication, and practice turning a detailed explanation into an engaging story that your audience will be sure to remember.
Prof. Dr. Daniela Salvatori and Adele Ferrario
Bio:
Daniela Salvatori is a Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology at Utrecht University’s Veterinary Faculty. She leads the Centre of Excellence for Plastination and Virtual Reality, developing models for clinical training in humans and animals. Committed to animal-free research, she chairs the Utrecht Transition Programme to Animal-Free Innovations and co-initiated the 125 million National Growth Fund project, CPBT, to accelerate animal-free biomedical innovations. Since August 2024, she has been the interim scientific director of the NGF.
Adele Ferrario, a research assistant at Utrecht’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, focuses on the role of coaches in Transdisciplinary Challenge-Based Learning (T-CBL). With a master’s in Toxicology and Environmental Health and a background in Science Communication and Education, she promotes animal-free research through educational initiatives, demonstrating her passion for ethical science and innovation.
Title: Implementing New Approach Methodologies (NAMs)
Step into the future of scientific innovation with our interactive workshop on New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), where we will explore the critical shift away from traditional animal testing methods. Through compelling real-world case studies, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of both the breakthroughs and the challenges in adopting animal-free alternatives.
In this interactive session, you will dive into two pivotal case studies: the Rabbit Pyrogen Test (RPT) and the Mouse Lethality Bioassay (MLB), which will spotlight the complexities and obstacles in moving away from animal-based testing and the reasons behind the delay in implementing NAMs, even when effective methods exist. The state of the art is that despite the availability of viable alternatives, adopting NAMs in certain areas has been delayed. Why has the adoption been so slow? Which are the reasons behind it? Which are different stakeholders’ perspectives in place?
During the workshop, you will step into the shoes of key stakeholders—from researchers to animal rights associations and regulators— and work together with your peers to uncover the barriers, controversies, and potential solutions behind the delay of the adoption of NAMs. Discover how your perspective can contribute to accelerating the adoption of cutting-edge, animal-free innovations. Join us to shape your critical thinking about the future of scientific testing. Don’t miss the chance to be part of this important conversation!
Dr. Anne de Hond and Dr. Tuur Leeuwenberg
Bio:
Anne de Hond pursued her master’s degree in Econometrics at the Erasmus School of Economics. After graduating, she did her PhD in clinical data science at Leiden University Medical Center. Tuur Leeuwenberg obtained his master’s degree in Language andCommunication Technologies at Saarland University and conducted his PhD in machine learning at KU Leuven. Currently, they are both working as assistant professor at the Julius Center of UMC Utrecht. They work on different data science-based topics, such as clinical prediction modeling, guidelines for clinical AI, and validation of Large Language Models such as ChatGPT for healthcare.
Title: Can we trust ChatGPT as a clinical assistant?
Generative Large Language Models (LLM) have recently made incredible progress and are speculated to become the next big revolution in healthcare. Many medical LLM applications have been proposed, such as the automated generation of clinical notes and chatbots answering patient questions. Thorough evaluation of developed LLMs is of the utmost importance to their safe and effective application in healthcare practice, as incomplete LLM outputs or unchecked LLM hallucinations can be harmful to patient care. Yet, due to their generative nature there is no obvious one-to-one translation of the LLM output into quantifiable validation outcomes. This workshop discusses the unique applications and evaluation challenges for LLMs in healthcare.
