AIMS AND SCOPE

WELCOME ADDRESS

On behalf of the Spanish Society of Parasitology, the EMOP IX Organising Committee and the EMOP IX International Scientific Committee, we are looking forward to welcoming you to the European Federation of Parasitologists Multicolloquium to be held in Valencia, Spain from 18 to 23 July 2004.

The EMOP IX Organising Committee is not only inviting European parasitologists, but also opening this comprehensive international meeting to scientists from the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania, with a special call to members of the Latin American Federation of Parasitology (FLAP) bearing in mind the historical, cultural and linguistic links with Spain.

AIMS AND SCOPE

Parasitology has been a multidisciplinary science from its beginnings. However, nowadays, we feel this more than ever with the incursion of specialists from other sciences coming to apply their methods and techniques to the study of parasitic organisms. The advent of modern, sophisticated techniques as those inherent to genomics and proteomics, immunology, computer modelling, remote sensing and geographic informations systems, only to list a few, has given rise to a situation in which it is common to see non-parasitologists authoring papers dealing on parasites, vectors and parasitic diseases.

Additionally, the great research power of many of those techniques has become an ideal mainly for younger generations of scientists. Therefore, in most recent meetings, sessions have centred more around methods and techniques than on parasite and vector species or groups of organisms, or parasitic diseases. A consequence of such organisations was the inclusion of papers dealing on completely different parasite organisms within the same session only because the same or similar technique was used. In the first years of this situation, sessions were exciting as they showed the research potential of these techniques. But with time, such scientific sessions have become tedious and sometimes even annoying, attending people posing few or no questions because of their lack of knowledge or interest on the parasitic organism objective of the paper, far away from those of their own research studies. Moreover, meetings organised in this way create problems for scientists who see that papers on the parasite, vector or parasitic disease of their own interest appear widely dispersed as isolated papers in many different sessions. Thus, one is obliged to enter a room at mid-session to listen to a presentation and, thereafter, immediately hurry off to another room to attend yet another communication on the same organism, all this of course, if possible, according to the schedules and programme and, moreover, if the parallel session is keeping the presentation schedule and not delayed or simply shortened because of the absence of a previous speaker.

Another immediate impact of this situation has been the proliferation of the so-called monographic meetings, in detriment of the general meetings. Scientists have been more and more attracted by those meetings monographically dealing on the organism(s) or disease(s) of their own interest, isolatedly organised and attended by few people but usually specialists on the same research field.

In EMOP IX we want to go back to the roots! Let’s return to sessions on given parasites, vectors and parasitic diseases. Let’s again focus on parasite models and parasite groups. Let’s once again gather the specialists working with different techniques but on the same organisms or diseases. Thus, we decided to select the following as central topic of EMOP IX:

MULTIDISCIPLINARITY

FOR

PARASITES, VECTORS AND PARASITIC DISEASES

To reach the above-mentioned objective, the following initiatives have been taken:

- Inscription fees will be kept to a minimum, with the aim of organising a congress as economically as possible to stimulate the participation of young parasitologists. With this purpose, moreover, special, low-price accommodation opportunities for students will be offered.

- Encouraging active participation by giving preference to oral communications rather than poster exhibitions. We would like young scientists to mainly present their papers orally.

- All symposia, sessions and workshops (with the exception of the International Meeting on Bioterrorism) will be open for the presentation of free oral and poster communications.

- All parasitological research fields are open for the presentation of free communications. Moreover, and according to requests received, sessions on parasitic fungi, parasitoids and plant parasites are also previewed.

- Sessions will be organised, whenever possible, around parasite models rather than techniques, thus bringing multidisciplinarity into a session on a given parasite or parasite group, vector or vector group, and parasitic disease. Additionally, the simultaneous running of different congresses and meetings offers the opportunity to organise sessions bringing together specialists on various fields analysing the same parasite organisms.

- The Multicolloquium format allows us to include different types of meetings: opening and closing sessions, plenary sessions, symposia including a large number of sessions, traditional oral presentation sessions, poster exhibitions, workshops including round tables, courses, and product exhibitions at stands. Selected invited keynote speakers from all continents, included in plenary sessions, symposia, special sessions and workshops, are going to assure the most up-to-date scientific contents.

- Sessions will be organised according to thematic fields thus enabling fundamentalists and applied researchers to work together. EMOPs have a great tradition of sessions on basic Parasitology which must be maintained. In the present EMOP IX, moreover, we are trying to stimulate the participation of researchers on applied fields (mainly parasitic diseases) who have shown a tendency to prefer other meetings in recent years. This is in accordance with the framework established by EFP in Parma, Italy 1996 and Poznan, Poland 2000 when the EFP Young Scientist Awards including prizes for both basic and applied research studies were launched.

Looking forward to seeing you all in Valencia on the Mediterranean in July 2004.

Prof. Dr. Santiago Mas-Coma

President

EMOP IX Organising Committee