Dear Young AINI Members,

This message is directed specifically to the Young Members (< 32 years old) of our association.

AINI is your association and it aims at giving you as much support as possible in your budding career through promoting the attendance of its Young Members to national and international congresses via the travel grants, which many of you have and will receive, as well as giving you the opportunity to present your findings at AINI congresses where possible.

Now, with the next annual meeting insight (May 2022), you have the opportunity to actually contribute directly to the scientific path of AINI, and, through your contribution, to acknowledge AINI’s support of its Young Members. Indeed, for the XXXth AINI Congress, we are proposing to introduce a symposium put together by Young Members specifically. 

To participate, you will need to fill in the proposal form, which asks that you:

1. Propose a theme for a symposium that you feel pertinent to neuroimmunology (and pertinent can be taken broadly), explaining clearly why you feel it is in fact pertinent and merits to be considered for a separate symposium.
2. Suggest three possible speakers well noted in the field related to the symposium theme, from which one can later be approached to give the symposium lecture. Justify why you would like this particular speaker in the context of the symposium theme.

We suggest that you form a “scientific committee” with Young Members of your lab or, even better, of other Italian labs to discuss and decide upon these issues. Your proposal will need to be submitted to the Direttivo AINI by January, 2022. The Direttivo will then evaluate the proposals and decide which “scientific committee” should be given the opportunity to put their symposium together. This will require defining a program for a 2-hour session that comprises a lecture of approximately 30 minutes and 10 minutes of discussion and 4 oral communications. If your symposium proposal is chosen, you will need to request abstracts related to the theme and propose your selection of the 4 oral presentations (preferentially from Young Members, but not essential) to the Direttivo for final decision.

We ask that this endeavour should be that of Young Members specifically, and not of their mentors…

We feel that this is an opportunity for Young Members to truly be part of AINI and not just accept what it gives, but to contribute to its goals of promoting and supporting neuroimmunology research in Italy, and we look forward to interesting proposals!