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#EFIC2025 for Early Career Researchers

 

The #EFIC2025 Congress features a number of sessions and activities dedicated to early career researchers.

ECR PLENARY PRESENTATIONS

At #EFIC2025, we are excited to provide Early Career Researchers with an opportunity to present and highlight their research. Be sure to attend these sessions on Thursday, 24 April:

Early-career plenary: Pain as a comorbidity of mental health disorders
 
Preclinical models of chronic pain-induced negative affect are valuable tools for understanding the comorbidity between chronic pain and affective disorders. However, assessing negative affect in rodents is complex. Several approaches have emerged in the past few years to resolve this issue. For instance, integration of batteries of test, long-access paradigms or the computation of emotional z-scores, provide a more comprehensive view of rodents’ affective state than single short-access behavioral tests. Studies using these approaches show that while the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) drives both anxiety- and depressive-like behaviors, specific subtypes of behaviors are linked to distinct ACC inputs and outputs.

 

Causal relationships between depression and chronic pain characterised using UK general-population datasets with whole-genome genotyping

While chronic pain can be a debilitating symptom of a range of conditions, it can also be studied as a complex disease trait in its own right. Conceptualizing chronic pain in this way is the main focus of my research. ‘Chronic pain’ is conceptualized as a broad, subjective, heterogenous trait concept and we can use this heterogeneity as motivation for research into various traits that may be more valuable as treatment targets compared to simple presence/ absence of chronic pain or of chronic pain conditions. This also allows us to use creative, thoughtful phenotyping and multiple data sources to think about traits in genetic studies of chronic pain (genome wide association studies, GWAS). We can also directly exploit the potential shared underlying factors across multiple chronic pain conditions and repurpose existing study output (multivariate GWAS approaches). I will summarise several years of work including a GWAS of ‘multisite chronic pain’, newer analyses using multivariate GWAS approaches in chronic overlapping pain conditions and nociplastic pain, and projects considering new ways to phenotype chronic pain in large biobanks and cohorts. I will also present recent work that interrogates; functional consequences of these GWAS findings using transcriptomic imputation, relationships between tissue-specific gene expression in chronic pain with clinical traits in electronic health records, and potential drug treatment repurposing guided by gene expression changes associated with chronic pain.
 
 
Preclinical research on the neurobiology of depression and its comorbidity with chronic pain

Preclinical models of chronic pain-induced negative affect are valuable tools for understanding the comorbidity between chronic pain and affective disorders. However, assessing negative affect in rodents is complex. Several approaches have emerged in the past few years to resolve this issue. For instance, integration of batteries of test, long-access paradigms or the computation of emotional z-scores, provide a more comprehensive view of rodents’ affective state than single short-access behavioral tests. Studies using these approaches show that while the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) drives both anxiety- and depressive-like behaviors, specific subtypes of behaviors are linked to distinct ACC inputs and outputs.
 
NEWCOMERS ORIENTATION SESSION

First time attending an EFIC Congress? Join us for the orientation session to go through key practical questions, understand the programme better and what are the highlights for early career researchers.

When – Thursday, 24 April 2024, 8:00 – 9:00 CET
Where – Pathways Lab – Rhône 1
Who – Open to all attendees

ECR ADVICE SESSIONS

With our ECR advice sessions, we provide discussions on topics relevant to the professional growth and wider skillset of pain researchers. These ‘softer’ sessions compliment the hard science of the workshops and plenaries and can provide some more practical advice and inspiration.

Pain & Pastries – After your PhD: perspectives in industry and academia
Friday, 25 April – 08:00-09:00 CET
Room: Pathways Lab – Rhône 1
Receive advice on how to look for post-docs, industry jobs, and other opportunities for the life after your PhD

Pain & Pastries – Integrating research into your clinical practice
Friday, 25 April – 08:00-09:00 CET
Room: Rhône 2
Find out more about how to remain active in research while doing clinical work

Pain & Pastries – Funding and publishing your research
Saturday, 26 April – 08:00-09:00 CET
Room: Pathways Lab – Rhône 1
Listen to presentations from editors on pain-specific grant schemes and receive general grant writing advice

Introducing the EFIC Rising Stars Programme
Saturday, 26 April – 16:00-17:45 CET
Room: Rhône 2
EFIC is excited to introduce a new project dedicated to supporting early career researchers in pain science. This initiative focuses on fostering professional growth through advice sessions, webinars, discussion groups and more. Join us as we unveil this at #EFIC2025 and use the opportunity to tell us what you think is most valuable for you.

 

ECR NETWORKING PARTY

Join other early career researchers (and anyone else who wants to get involved) to meet other people working in and excited by pain science. Make contacts and share experiences with others going down a similar career path. This was a huge hit in 2023 and is sure to sell out.

When – Friday evening
Where – F&K Bistro Club, 13 Place Jules Ferry, 69006 Lyon – https://www.f-and-k.fr/
Who – Open to all attendees but separate registration required (additional fee: 42 EUR incl. VAT)

POSTER NETWORKING

At #EFIC2025, all posters will have a dedicated area and time for presentation, whether it’s during the regular poster sessions, oral presentations, guided poster walks or the informal poster presentation during our welcome and networking reception.

When – Throughout the programme
Where – Poster area 
Who – Open to all attendees

POSTER WALKS

EFIC offer the opportunity for poster presenters to take part in guided ‘poster walks’, capturing an audience and having a senior research leader moderate and initiate discussions. This year we are integrating the posters with the more high-level programme themes by grouping poster walks thematically and linking them to workshops.

When – Throughout the programme
Where – Exhibition area
Who – Open to all attendees

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