Symposium 2023

CARIM symposium 2023 took place on Wednesday 29 November 2023.

Missed it or want to relive (part of) the day? https://youtube.com/live/z32DMTR8FAo?feature=share

09.00 - 09.30 Coffee and welcome
09.30 - 10.00 Opening by Tilman Hackeng

SESSION 1 Laureates NWO and Dutch Heart Foundation - moderator: Blanche Schroen

10.00 - 10.20 Sam Heuts - ‘Postoperative myocardial injury: when enough is enough’
10.20 - 10.40 Rob Holtackers - ‘Interventional cardiac MRI: a new strategy for improved
diagnostics and treatment of cardiac arrhythmias’
10.40 - 11.00 Judith Cosemans - ‘The MegaCardiocyte project - discovering the microvascular
landscape from a platelet perspective’

11.00 - 11.30 Break

SESSION 2 Ministry of Education, Culture and Science:
Topsector Plan Medical & Health Sciences - moderator: Jordi Heijman

11.30 - 11.50 Astrid Hermans - ‘Optimization of personalized and integrated remote atrial
fibrillation care to reduce socioeconomic disparities’
11.50 - 12.10 Yannick Nielen - ‘Maastricht Medication Datalink’
12.10 - 12.30 Frank van Rosmalen - ‘Table 0; documenting the steps to go from clinical database
to research dataset’

12.30 - 14.15 Poster session and lunch

SESSION 3 Moderator: Leon Schurgers

14.15 - 15.00 Paul Shiels - ‘Manipulating the exposome of ageing: a geroscience approach to
improving healthspan’
15.00 - 15.15 Harry Crijns Research Grant - moderator: Harry Crijns
sponsored by Bayer, Amgen & Hart en vaat onderzoekfonds Limburg
15.15 - 15.30 Jordi Heijman - ‘Outcome survey Employee experience CARIM’

15.30 - 16.00 Break

SESSION 4 Robert Reneman Lecture - moderator: Henri Spronk

16.00 - 17.00 Mary Cushman - ‘Stroke and Cognitive Impairment in a Biracial US Cohort:
The REGARDS Study’
17.00 - 17.30 CARIM awards & prizes, CARIM Priori and wrap-up

17.30 Evening celebration: Thiessen Wijnkoopers, Grote Gracht 18 Maastricht

Recap and awards CARIM Day 2023

We are looking back on a very successful CARIM Day 2023 with excellent scientific lectures from our recent laureates, a session on the Topsector plan Medical & Health sciences, a lecture on the exposome of aging and how to improve healthy life span of Prof. Paul Shiels, a presentation by the Harry Crijns Research Grant winner, the outcomes on the CARIM employee experience survey and the Robert Reneman lecture presented by Prof. Mary Cushman about stroke and cognitive impairment and racial differences; and last but not least, the CARIM awards & prizes.

Six HS-BAFTA talent medals in the various categories were awarded:

• Talented future PhD candidates: Daria Majcher and Yesim Kaya
• Talented PhD candidates: ; Aaron Iding, Eline Berends and
  Ellen Denessen
• Talented postdoc: Amée Buziau

The CARIM commitment award of 2023 went to Sandrine Seyen for her contributions to the CARIM Strategic Board and SCRUM, her instrumental role in organising the support staff and for being CARIM photographer during several occasions. Congratulations to Sandrine!

The CARIM dissertation prize 2022 was awarded to Dr.ir. Rob Holtackers for the thesis 'Visualising the Invisible: Dark-Blood Late Gadolinium Enhancement MRI for Improved Detection of Subendocardial Scar'. 

“Enthusiastic”, “proactive” and “equipped with a critical mind” are only three of the qualifications that characterize Rob. In his PhD thesis, he describes the physical principles of magnetic resonance imaging and, in particular, the development of a novel method that increases the scar-to-blood contrast in the heart, called “dark-blood late-gadolinium enhancement”.

Not only did he prevail individually, he also proved to be a team player. As an example: the introduction of interventional MRI at Maastricht UMC+, to which Rob contributed significantly, was awarded the 2022 NWO Team Science Award. Besides, many more scientific awards, fellowships and recognitions were presented to him.

Finally, the following researchers won the CARIM Annual Symposium poster prize:

• Division Blood: Titus Lemmens - Native Vascular Extracellular Matrix Coating for in vitro Cardiovascular Models (Poster judges: Carla van der Kallen & Sébastien Foulquier)
• Division Vessels: Sabine Daemen - In-depth immunophenotyping of immune cells in cardiometabolic disease with spectral flow cytometry (Poster judges: Paola van der Meijden & Constance Baaten)
• Division Heart: Job Stoks - Multimodal image integration can improve management of ventricular tachycardias (Poster judges: Yvonne Henskens & Rogier Veltrop)