Dear members of the AETE,
In Europe, as in the rest of the world, we are facing challenging times due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On April 22, the board of the AETE met to discuss our annual scientific conference scheduled to be held in Dublin, and chaired by Prof Patrick Lonergan and his Local Organising Committee. After extensive and detailed discussions, considering all factors, we took the very difficult decision to postpone the AETE Annual Meeting in 2020 for one year. This means that there will be no physical AETE meeting in Dublin this year, but we will meet in Dublin in September 2021. The board is fully united and recognises that this is an unprecedented decision, but we remain convinced this is the best solution for our members, you, and our society.
Despite this, AETE will work hard to be active in other ways. In a truly exciting development we are planning to hold “AETE-Lite” – a digital meeting to give our members the opportunity to experience part of the AETE activities from the safety of your own homes. Full details will follow, but in brief:
1) We encourage all students to submit their exciting scientific data in abstract form to be considered for publication in Animal Reproduction. Furthermore, these abstracts will be published in our annual proceedings. The deadline is the 1st of May 2020.
2) We invite practitioners to report their findings in the field in the form of an abstract. The deadline is the 1st of May 2020.
3) When authors are submitting abstracts, we invite you to opt for “oral presentation”. Just like the regular conference, you will have an option to select an “oral presentation". A selection of abstracts will be chosen for oral presentation and we will develop an online programme. These will be short recorded oral presentations discussing the poster which will be available to members and delegates. The best oral presentation will be awarded a “best oral presentation prize” comprising a free registration for our 2021 meeting in Dublin and an accepted oral presentation in the main program. More info to follow.
4) We will organize a General Assembly meeting online in September as well to present the annual statistics and the financial year together with other important points for our members. Again, details will follow.
5) The main program with our invited speakers and workshops will be postponed for one year. So, we will not provide an online alternative here. The invited reviews however, will be published together with the abstracts in Animal Reproduction and our proceedings of this year.
May we ask you to distribute this email to your network, colleagues and friends? It is of capital importance to remind you all to subscribe at our website in order to guarantee that your email address appears in our list. We need your contacts so we can communicate regularly about necessary updates.
Please DO NOT FORGET: ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE 1st OF MAY!
In the name of the entire board, I wish you all the best in these difficult times. Stay safe and healthy.
Jo Leroy, President of the AETE
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