We’ve just held the project’s kick-off meeting, or kick-off meeting. The English term perfectly captures the idea and purpose of this type of meeting, which aims to present the project’s objectives, define future tasks, and organize and integrate the project team. It is a great opportunity to get to know each other better, feel a sense of unity with the team, and take pride in participating in a shared endeavor. There is no doubt that all of this was achieved, and the consortium members left the meeting full of the enthusiasm and drive necessary to achieve the project’s goals.
The meeting, organized by the project leader - the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences - took place on January 22–23, 2026, in Poznań. On the first day, at the IBCH PAS headquarters, a series of open lectures in English was held, attended by a large group of IBCH PAS staff and doctoral students, as well as guests from outside the Institute. The event featured lectures by distinguished guests:
- prof. André Uitterlinden (Erasmus MC, Rotterdam), project manager Genome of Europe (GoE, https://genomeofeurope.eu/), in the lecture titledGenome of Europe (GoE) project– building a pan-European reference database" spoke about genomics from a European perspective,
- prof. Jan Lubiński (Pomeranian Medical University, Szczecin) presented the results of genetic studies on the Polish population’s predisposition to cancer during a lecture titledGenetic basis of cancer – results of long-term studies of the Polish population”.
Next, the G4PL project manager, Dr. Luiza Handschuh, Professor of IBCH PAS, presented the origins and objectives of the Genomics for Poland project.
The lectures are available on YouTube: https://youtube.com/live/PCMR3r5ePAg
The public portion of the meeting also featured four presentations by researchers from IBCH PAS - Prof. Marek Figlerowicz, Dr. Ireneusz Stolar, Dr. Michał Golubiński, and Dr. Paulina Gałka-Marciniak - who discussed the historical context and results of their research in the fields of genomics, archaeogenomics, genetic genealogy, and microRNA in the human genome.
A brief introduction of the consortium members kicked off the closed-door portion of the meeting, which continued the following day at the headquarters of the PSNC Institute’s affiliate. A series of parallel working sessions were held there by the technical and administrative teams.
The visit to PSNC concluded with a tour of the network management center and the server room, which houses, among other things, infrastructure for research using AI and a quantum computer, which will be used to analyze and store the data generated by the project.
