COVID-19 pandemic effects on the Nordic POP: postponing and changes in the concept of the planned Nordic POP events – new calendar 2020
During the beginning of 2020, there is a high number of individual activities in process and planned. All these activities will naturally and unfortunately be affected by COVID19, but we are in a process of making an emergency plan to be able to perform part of these activities remotely using electronic meeting platforms (“eMeetings”) and mobility actions (“eMobility”). Apart from that, already planned 13 training events for the 2020.
Some of these events had been, after consideration of the organizers, postoponed either to the late autumn/winter of 2020, or to 2021 (e.g. …Uppsala: WP2 workshop: particle based formulations / line up with the famous Valborg-celebration moved to 27-29-Apr-2021, China mobility/forum Shenyang University postponed with no new fixd date set yet). Some events are still in question (Tromsø:Advances in skin therapy scheduled for 29-30 June 2020, Summer school: modelling of gastrointestinal mobility and transport scheduled for 22 June-3 July 2020, Separation symposium in Copenhagen planned for August 2020), some of the planned training and networking events, will take place as planned, but in form of “eMeeting”: first of those is the Nordic POP Interactive workshop: “3D Printing – Formulation design and material perspective”organized by Helsinki. This, originally planned two-days’ workshop, was held on 12th May. Next event is a PhD course in Drug Delivery, organized by University of Copenhagen in cooperation with Nordic POP, scheduled for 5-29 May 2020, which has also changed a concept to online course.
Another interesting initiative is the electronic platform established by work package 6 that is focusing at computational tools in the field of pharmaceutical sciences. It is expected that in accordance to the general situation in Europe and related travel limitations, more out of Nordic POP planned events will change the concept to the “eMeeting” form of mobility. The entire calendar of the Nordic POP events with the constant updates can be found at https://nordicpop.ku.dk/calendar/.