International PhD School on Diabetes Technologies Held at the University of Pavia

From 22–27 February, MuSiC4Diabetes partner University of Pavia hosted a winter school on Diabetes Technologies. The programme focused on the latest technological advances in diabetes care. Through various formats, including seminars, group work and keynote lectures, participants gained insights into recent developments in glucose monitoring, insulin therapy, artificial pancreas systems and telemedicine approaches.

MuSiC4Diabetes Featured at the Winter School

MuSiC4Diabetes was well represented at the event. Chiara Toffanin (University of Pavia) was part of the scientific committee and gave a talk on the artificial pancreas, focusing on closed-loop systems such as the one being developed within MuSiC4Diabetes. She introduced novel neural-network approaches and control techniques to calculate optimised insulin therapy strategies. The PhD students demonstrated a high interests in these topics actively participating to the discussion. The attendants came from different parts of the country and have different backgrounds: not only engineers but also physician and computer scientists took part to the school.

Networking Opportunities for Early Career Researchers

For the MuSiC4Diabetes PhD students, Martina Drecogna (University of Padova), Matteo Ragni and Paolo Alberto Mongini (both University of Pavia), the winter school provided an excellent opportunity for academic exchange and networking within the field of diabetes technologies. Martina Drecogna, who participated online, benefited greatly from the event:

"It was an excellent opportunity to learn from many professionals and experts in the field. I think the knowledge and technical updates acquired during this week will be useful insights for the progress of our MuSiC4Diabetes project. Despite the distance, I felt very involved in the discussions. A very stimulating part of the week was the data challenge, where we worked on a dataset of people with type 1 diabetes to answer specific questions related to diabetes. It was very interesting to work on real data, present our results and learn about our colleagues' findings."

Connecting early-career researchers and exposing them to the latest research approaches contributes to successful and sustainable European diabetes research. In MuSiC4Diabetes, we consider ourselves fortunate to be part of such an initiative.