Dear Colleagues and Readers of the International Journal of Radiation Biology,
In May 2021, we organized the 24th ConRad conference in Munich, with ConRad being the acronym for ‘Global Conference on Radiation Topics - Preparedness, Response, Protection, and Research.’ The goal of this conference is to bring together radiation protection experts and researchers interested in radiation biology with a wide range of expertise to discuss the latest developments, with a focus on medical radiation protection. Usually, we are very proud to host civilian and military visitors from Germany, Europe, and worldwide at our Bundeswehr Institute of Radiobiology affiliated to the University of Ulm, which is located on the campus of the Bundeswehr Medical Academy in Munich, Germany.
The year 2021 featured many changes. Due to ongoing Covid-19 pandemic we have not been able to organize an onsite meeting. We have also switched to the IJRB as the journal for our proceedings, so with the support of the IJRB, we are happy to present to you a condensed insight into our ConRad conference in this issue. Being forced to cancel the on-site meeting and to switch to an online event, we still decided to stay with our regular timing to offer a conference every two years. The setup of the virtual conference was very challenging for our team - and I cannot thank enough all the many people who made this conference a reality in the end.
The essential elements of a conference are the presenters of talks and posters, and even more importantly, the attendees of the meeting. Our team was impressed and happy to virtually welcome 230 visitors from 26 countries, stretching from Europe to America, Africa and Asia – what a fantastic result. Many participants of the networks we are actively participating in, joined the meeting; to mention a few: IAEA, WHO, NATO, SSK, GHSI – but not to forget the scientific organizations in our field like, e.g. RENEB, IABERD, IRPA, EURADOS or NERIS as well as our youngest ‘group’ – the students from the master course of Radiobiology of the Technical University of Munich.
‘ConRad 2021’ addressed a range of urgent questions in different areas, including radiation accident management, radiation emergency medical preparedness and response, radiation health effects and medical countermeasures, radiation biology/radiation physics, radiation protection, radiation risk perception of the public/external exposure assessment, effects of low dose ionizing radiation and effects of electromagnetic fields as well as impacts of Covid 19 in the area of medical radiation preparedness and response. It became clear that the virtual format is no real substitute for an on-site face-to-face meeting. Still, it offered the opportunity to present recent work and keep the international society in the field connected.
This year’s focus was on three main topics: (1) ‘Gene Expression for Biodosimetry and Effect Prediction Purposes: Promises, Pitfalls and Future Directions,’ (2) ‘Reevaluation of Radiological and Nuclear Events,’ and (3) ‘COVID-19 and Radiation Preparedness – Impact on Operational Readiness/Lessons Learned/Transferability’. In total, 89 presentations were given. Besides live sessions, ConRad offered every content as Video-on-Demand for four weeks. This special issue presents excerpts of the meeting ranging from ‘thoughts on the impact of COVID19 on our radiobiological society’, preparedness for nuclear events, essential radiation protection, biodosimetry, new countermeasures, or impacts of mobile phones on the EEG. As a start you will find a manuscript addressing the first key session organized by Patrick Ostheim and Michael Abend in this particular issue.
Eventually, I would like to stress that this year’s conference would not have been possible without the enthusiastic work of our local organizing team and I want to thank representatively our IT administrator, Sebastian Schuster, the conference secretaries, Leonhard Kaatsch and Mark Hotz, as well as my co-guest-editors for IJRB Harry Scherthan and Michael Abend.
I hope this special issue will be of interest to you and furthermore, I would be delighted to welcome you at our next ConRad conference – the 25th edition – in spring 2023.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.