Afterword

Dear colleagues and friends,

It was my great pleasure to welcome you all at the Annual Conference of the German Genetics Society (GfG) from 14 to 16 September, 2011, which was hosted this year by the University of Würzburg. With over 200 participants we look back on a positive response from this year´s conference!

The conference was a meeting point for scientists and students from all fields of Genetics. Internationally renowned speakers had given valuable insights into their own research and about the state of knowledge of such diverse areas as Developmental genetics, Disease genetics, Epigenetics, Evolutionary genetics, Molecular genetics, Neuro- and behavioral genetics, as well as Population genetics and Genetic epidemiology.

Interesting parallel sessions and many poster presentations further stimulated and promoted the exchange of ideas related to the above-mentioned topics. I would like to thank at this point all our abstract submitters, who gave us the possibility to enrich the scientific programme by their interesting research results and latest developments! 

Another highlight was the Max-Delbrück-Lecture, delivered by Herbert Jäckle on the topic “Learning from flies – from body patterning to human health”.

A new and certainly useful platform for our young colleagues was the “Young Geneticists Programme”, which focused on career issues as well as on fellowships and funding opportunities and gave the possibility to meet the experts and discuss about their personal experience as highly successful researchers.

A special “thank you” goes to the companies, which presented innovative products, technologies and services in our industrial exhibition.

I look forward to welcome you to the next Annual Conference of the German Genetics Society in 2012!

Manfred Schartl
Chairman
President of the German Genetics Society (GfG)