EDUC8 Training

The EDUC8 consortium has assembled an integrative educational program organized in three different levels of training activities:

  • Local training activities: Each PhD fellow will work on an individual research project. Internal training activities will also include the participation of the fellows in weekly lab meetings, journal clubs as well as institutional seminars available in each of the participating institutions, and trainings provided by local doctoral school programs. The External Advisory Board (EAB) will meet regularly to evaluate the fellows’ progresses. The EAB will advise the consortium in effectively implementing training actions for scientific and transferrable skills.

  • Network-wide training activities: the EDUC8 training program has implemented a coordinated training plan along several initiatives. The fellows will formally present their findings at least once a year during each annual EDUC8 meeting. They will attend joint scientific training activities that include immunology, hematology, genomics, proteomics and bio-informatics as well as soft skills such as entrepreneurship, intellectual property, dissemination skills (e.g., presentation and writing skills). A crucial innovative aspect of the training program is the exposure of the fellows to clinical training, with meetings with patients, discussions with clinicians, to better apprehend the unmet needs in the clinical management of HA patients, and conceptualize provocative therapeutic strategies. The deep immersion of the fellows in the clinical life in the context of a day-to-day dedication to individual research projects will synergize with an intense three-year training in innovation management, communication and entrepreneurial skills. The entrepreneurship training will culminate when fellows will form teams and simulate the creation of start-ups based on concrete ideas developed from their own scientific experience and medical insight. Lastly, Open Science skills will be an integral part of the fellows’ career development plan. The fellows will organize regular Open Science Webinars that will be recorded and posted as ‘Educational Resources’ on the EDUC8 website to facilitate on-going training.

  • Secondments: the fellows will take part in an intensive program of exchanges among the partners. Thus, most fellows employed in the academic sector will undergo secondments in the industry, while fellows working in the industry will have secondments in academic groups. The exchange program will thus foster sharing of information within the consortium, nourish an effective networking between fellows and partners, and widen the range of multidisciplinary knowledge accessible to fellows. The specific expertise that the fellows will learn with the private partners include single-cell NGS using bar-coded Dextramer reagents, nanoparticle-based technology, glycan biology, molecular characterization of human T-cell lines, production of recombinant proteins, purification of plasma proteins, and high throughput characterization of B-cell epitopes.

WP3 is led by Dr Sébastien Lacroix-Desmazes from the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM), Paris, France and by Dr Bernard Maillère from Commissariat à l’énergie atomique et énergies alternatives, Gif-sur-Yvette, France.