Executive Page

President’s Page: On dynamite

September 1, 2012

I write this from London where we are hosting and enjoying a wonderful Olympics, an honour which fell to Stockholm exactly 100 years ago.

One of the joys of being a member of the EFNS is that we meet in wonderful places: in 2009 Florence, in 2010 Geneva, in 2011 Budapest and now Stockholm. I am enormously looking forward to this my first visit and perhaps yours too. We read that it is built on fourteen islands and strikingly beautiful, nicknamed the Venice of the North. It is so clean that you could bathe in the surrounding sea and the locals do, warmed no doubt by the Gulf Stream and the fortitude of their Viking ancestors.

The venue for the Congress will be Stockholm International Fairs and Congress Centre (Stockholmsmässan), only 10 minutes by public transport from the city centre where we will hold our opening ceremony in the Victoria Hall serenaded by Super Trouper, an ABBA tribute band on Saturday 8th September. We may be too busy to see many of the sights but the Congress will bring us to some of the city’s iconic buildings. Those of you who are fortunate to have tickets for the Scientific Smørgasbord Dinner addressed by Professor Richard Frackowiak, Lausanne, Switzerland on “Computers meet images – brain function, structure and the patient” will do so in another iconic building, the National Museum on Sunday 9th September. We are fortunate to have been invited by the City of Stockholm to hold a networking reception in the City Hall on Monday 10th September. This will include a tour of the Nobel Hall, the site of four of the annual Nobel Prize ceremonies for physiology or medicine, physics, chemistry, and literature. The prize for peace is given in Oslo. The prizes have been awarded almost every year since 1901, funded by a legacy from Alfred Nobel, a brilliant scientist, polymath and businessman who made his fortune by inventing dynamite and exploiting its commercial potential. The history tour on Tuesday 11th September will take place in the Nobel Museum in the former Stock Exchange Building.

The plenary EFNS Clinical Lecture is one of the major events of the Congress and will be given by Professor Marie-Germaine Bousser, Paris, France on Tuesday 11th September at the congress centre, Hall A8. She will be discussing CADASIL (Cerebral Autosomal Dominant Arteriopathy with Sub-cortical Infarcts and Leukoencephalopathy), due to mutation of the notch3 gene causing migraine and stroke and the lessons it teaches.

We have an exciting programme of teaching courses, main topics, oral presentations, poster sessions and symposia. The Congress provides a venue for meetings of all our scientist panels and task forces and above all for you to meet old friends, make new ones and learn the meaning of Skål.

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