The 25th Annual Meeting of the EMBO Young Investigator Network took place on 12–14 March 2026 at the National Technical Library in Prague, Czechia. This year’s meeting gathered close to 100 scientists from the EMBO Young Investigator Network as well as 10 early career researchers funded by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and nine external speakers with the aim of furthering networking and knowledge exchange. In addition to talks by network members, two sessions were dedicated to the use of artificial intelligence in the life sciences.
Hosted by EMBO Member and Director of the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry of the Czech Academy of Sciences (IOCB) Prof Jan Konvalinka, together with former EMBO Installation Grantee Kvido Strisovsky and Young Investigator Tomáš Pluskal from the IOCB, the annual meeting of the network offered an opportunity to connect life scientists from various fields and to inspire new ways of engaging in scientific research.
Deputy Head of Scientific Publications at EMBO Press, Thomas Lemberger, Tomáš Pluskal, and invited experts in the field of AI from start-ups, journals and academia, led two discussion sessions on the applications and best practice of artificial intelligence in research. This is a fast-developing and hotly debated topic and the meeting provided a platform for YIN members to take part in the debate. Topics from ethics and concerns to methods in which artificial intelligence can aid research were also covered.
Feedback suggests that listening to their peers from all areas of the life sciences has sparked many ideas for new research directions. Attendees praised EMBO for enabling varied scientific conversations, as the diversity of topics is not reflected in thematic scientific meetings.
“The EMBO Young Investigator Network annual meetings are very different from other conferences”, says Neha Jain, an EMBO Global Investigator at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Jodhpur, India. “These meetings have given me an opportunity to broaden my perspective and potential for collaboration. This year’s session on artificial intelligence was an eye-opener; I thoroughly enjoyed it and learned a lot.”
The next annual meeting will see the network joining with the newly elected EMBO Members and will take place in Lisbon, Portugal, in October 2027.
