Meet our fellows

To form this Summer School, ENII selected state-of-the-art topics presented by leading researchers, wrapped them with superb friendly atmosphere, spiced them with excellent location and food and finally served them in a well organized manner. This School will probably inspire my way in immunology.

The ENII Summer School was wonderfully balanced and scheduled; somehow I came back from Capo Caccia feeling like I'd had a summer holiday, but at the same time having learnt an incredible amount. The science certainly did not play second fiddle but the sun, the beach, the sea, the food and the dancing indeed helped to make the week very special. The guest lecturers all taught well in their own fields and my knowledge of certain areas was certainly increased. However, what really helped me was the continuity between the speakers and the fact that many concepts arose repeatedly on various days, which really allowed me to start putting some of the pieces of the immunology “puzzle” together. Of course the networking was the other really valuable component – seeing who is doing what and where, getting ideas for post-doc labs and institutes and meeting other wonderful students from all over Europe. We will be able to use each other as contacts and future colleagues and hopefully there will be some lasting friendships.

First of all, the ENII Summer School was a wonderful and intense week in terms of both science and social life. Personally, I think I have never learnt, thought or discussed so many different aspects of immunology in such a short period of time and I really enjoyed it. It was also nice to see that, even if you are not working in a particular field, you can come up with interesting questions and develop ideas further. In contrast to a conference, at the Summer School the students were really encouraged to ask questions after every talk and, judging from the questions, most students followed the presentations and came up with interesting comments. In addition, in the tutorials students could ask not only questions related to the presentation but also address experimental problems and get feedback from the speaker, as well as listen to the opinions and contributions of other students working in that field. In my opinion we had very nice discussions at every tutorial.
Importantly, after all those inspiring lectures at the Summer School I felt that we already know quite a lot in different areas of immunology; however, in many aspects, key questions are still open, therefore, creating a lot of room and need for us, the young scientists, to work them out