Euro Neuro 2023
Euro Neuro
Brussels, Belgium || November 5-7, 2023
One of my favorite meetings was in a favorite town of mine this past week (or at least in the town of my favorite bar, Delirium). I went to the very first Euro Neuro in 1998. I remember seeing some flyers for it at the neuroanesthesia meeting, SNACC. A good friend of mine, Bill Young (then a budding neuroanesthesiologist), said he was going, so I decided to go as well.
As many of you know, the Euro Neuro 2023 Meeting was planned at a medical school in a somewhat unknown town of Genk (not Ghent) in Belgium as that’s where one of the co-founders, Cathy DeDeyne worked. They expected a few hundred to register but they underestimated the timeliness of the topic and over a thousand folks showed up. Despite the crowded venue, the meeting resonated and has been held regularly ever since then rotating through cities in Europe.
Euro Neuro 2023 was on the Erasmus campus, a short subway ride from the center of Brussels and was organized by Dr. Fabio Taccone. About 600 people from almost 50 countries attended the meeting. This meeting had a lot of topic updates and attracted quite a few trainees. The discussions were lively and very informative. Exhibitors showed the latest in technology for neuroanesthesia and neurocritical care. The next Euro Neuro is in Florence, Italy, October 29-31, 2024.
Dr. Fabio Taccone (Chairperson) & Dr. Cathy DeDeyne (Euro Neuro co-founder)
A spontaneous group picture of some of the attendees
It was wonderful to see the much-loved Marek Czosnyka (Cambridge) after quite a few years.
Ari Ercole (Cambridge) gave several stimulating lectures on AI (below). He showed a great slide with three images: how he thought of himself (a dazzling futuristic scientist), what others thought of him (a brilliant mathematician), and what he really does (an image of a garbage collector). It perfectly summed up the role of most data scientists.
Below: Dr. Frank Rasulo (Brescia), Dr. Claudio Privitera (NeurOptics), Ethan Moyer (Moberg Analytics), and Dick Moberg on the subway to the meeting. I met Frank at this meeting in a funny way. When he started to speak at his first lecture I was expecting an Italian accent but heard a South Philly accent…near where I live. I asked him about it…and found out he grew up in New Jersey kind of next door to Philly. I also reconnected with Claudio, the inventor of the NPi index at NeurOptics.
Ethan Moyer and Peter Smielewski (Cambridge) trying out various sizes of Belgian beers.
Peter with Raimund Helbok (Linz) and Dick Moberg
Ethan in Dick's favorite bar, Delirium
