Vall d'Hebron Barcelona Hospital Campus has celebrated the second edition of PhD Day, a full day of scientific activities created by and for the doctoral community of Vall d'Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) and Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO). As in the first edition, the session was a success with about 150 participants, most of them predoctoral researchers, but also postdoctoral scientists, principal investigators, research technicians, master's students, healthcare professionals, and administrative and support staff.

The welcome was given by Dr. Albert Salazar, Manager of Vall d'Hebron University Hospital, Dr. Begoña Benito, Director of VHIR, and Dr. Josep Tabernero, Director of VHIO and Head of the Medical Oncology Department at Vall d'Hebron University Hospital.

Dr. Albert Salazar emphasized the campus's relevance and excellence. He also congratulated the students for their effort and encouraged them to maintain this excellence despite it being a daily challenge. As he himself states, “we need each one of the doctoral students to achieve this”. Dr. Benito also took the opportunity to congratulate and thank the PhD students for organizing this important event, emphasizing that it was born from the students' needs and that they are doing it without limits. For his part, Dr. Tabernero acknowledged the importance of this event where students are the protagonists because they are the future of research and the current driving force of the research institutions.
One of the goals of the day was to highlight the different research lines carried out by the predoctoral group, and for this purpose, eight short talks were given, each by a different doctoral student. The speakers were selected by a committee composed of members of the doctoral community, with the idea of illustrating the great variety and high quality of the research lines currently being studied on Campus, with a wide range of topics from genomic platforms for immunotherapy, Alzheimer's treatment, lysosomal storage disorders, and anaphylaxis biomarkers, to cancer: diagnostic rates of hereditary cancers, innovative gene therapy, and cancer resistance mechanisms.

We also had the presence of professor. Daniel Truhn, from the Aachen University in Germany. We enjoyed his talk titled "Foundation models – the Beauty and the Beast" where he essentially discussed the two sides of artificial intelligence in the field of radiology. According to Dr. Truhn, “Usually, there is a multidisciplinary team behind the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Each professional in this team looks for very specific things, with the risk of not detecting other aspects outside their speciality. And it can take months or even years to reach the appropriate specialist. This is where artificial intelligence comes into play, but understood as augmented intelligence. And that means as a tool that supports professionals to make a faster diagnosis.”

In the afternoon, we enjoyed a round table with four professionals who have taken different career paths: Irene Marco Rius, Junior group leader, "la Caixa" Foundation - BIST Chemical Biology Programme at IBEC; Evan Floden, CEO of Seqera labs; Maruxa Martínez, Digital media and Scientific affairs at PRBB and Associate Professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra; and Malte Beringer, Grant Consultant, Scientific Editor and Trainer.

A new feature of this second edition was a thesis contest, where eight students presented their research projects in just 3 minutes each. There were two awards: David Ramirez Gomez, with the thesis  "Alzheimer's retreat: a multifactorial treatment to remember", was the winner of the jury award; and Anna Behr, with the thesis "Every Life Matters: Innovative Therapy against Rare Rebel Gene", won the audience award.

The day ended with more informal activities, open only to PhD students, as their main aim was to encourage networking among them.

The event was sponsored by Sarsted, Thermo Fisher, Vector Builder, Astrazeneca, and Bestours Corporate, and with the collaboration of Microbacterium, Centre Cívic Casa Groga, Science Museum, CosmoCaixa, La Campana Penguin, Random House, Simon Coll Xocolaters, and Bomboneria Pons.