The EMBO Workshops on autophagy are well-recognized by the scientific quality and diversity in working models, which provides a great overview of the current state of the field. This year the EMBO Workshop was entitled Autophagy across scales, and held in Sorrento (Italy) on 23rd-27th September 2024. Along these 5 days, the program covered autophagy from every single angle, in which renowned researchers but also novel ones were providing valuable insights about autophagy, from the molecular mechanisms to the translational ones. I was fascinated about how autophagy is evolving into a more interdisciplinary field, where the combination of bioinformatics, biophysics, biochemistry and cell biology provides a new view of our research. In this regard, the location of the venue allowed me to network colleagues with different expertise and have fruitful discussions. Besides all the science-related topics, we had time to have a guided visit in Pompeii, where I was amazed walking through the Roman life and how this society lived 2,000 years ago. All this was possible by the full dedication of the meeting organizers (Sascha Martens, Antonella De Matteis and Helene Knaevelsrud) for preparing such a great conference.
My abstract entitled “The Phagophore-endoplasmic Reticulum Membrane Contact Sites are a Key Coordinator of Autophagosome Biogenesis” was selected for a short talk, having the chance to present our current study about the role and regulation of the membrane contact sites during the autophagosome generation. This gave me the opportunity to discuss our results with experts in this particular topic, but also to the rest of the experienced audience.
I would like to thanks Nordic Autophagy Society for the financial support through the NAS Conference Grant. My presence in this workshop has been essential to share our current project with the autophagy community, but also to help me in consolidating already-established collaborations and expanding my network for new ones.
