Dear Colleagues:
On March 30th, 2007 the STEP coordination action completed its
activity. The action was a great success by all means, and achieved
all objectives we set at the outset, in January 2006. In particular,
the VPH Research roadmap is now available in its pre-print form; the
content is final, although a new version should be made available on
line and in a limited number of printed copies before the end of May
2007.
http://www.biomedtown.org/biomed_town/STEP/Reception/step_presentations/RoadMap/vph_roadmap_v2b.pdf

The first scope of this farewell message is to thank you all.
Without the collective intelligence, energy and vision expressed
during this year, the VPH would not be the concrete research
challenge that it is today. At the personal level this year has been
the most exciting of my life, from a professional point of view; I
learnt a lot, and I conclude this work with a strong sense of
achievement, which is not something easy to experience, nowadays.
Thanks to those who did a lot, and those who did a little; those who
agreed, and those who disagreed; those who joint at outset and those
who joint at the end. With all these differences, still each of you
was fundamental to the success of STEP. Thank You.

And Now? The call for proposal entitled Virtual Physiological Human
should be out in days. It should call for proposals up to 76 Million
Euro of EC support, including two small CSA, one NoE a few IP and
many STRP projects. A few suggestions, for those who plan to submit
a proposal: target the STRP projects, they are a better tool in this
phase; as a project goal target something specific, but that can have
a general utility for most if not all VPH projects; do not forget to
include multiscale approach.

All these projects should start somewhere in 2008. And meanwhile?
It will not be easy to maintain the momentum without an organised
initiative like STEP. The best bet, in our opinion, is to keep alive
the VPH community around Biomed Town. This is where you all come
again into the equation. Inside Biomed Town The STEP Building is now
closed, and will remain only for historical reasons and for
documentation. All valuable resources were moved to the VPH Square,
that from now on will be the agora of our community, if and only if
each of us will contribute to keep it alive and well.
VPH Events Folder and VPH News Folder should be constantly enriched
with news and events info related to VPH, Physiome, Integrative
Biology, and integrative research in general.
http://www.biomedtown.org/biomed_town/VPH/VPHEvents/
http://www.biomedtown.org/biomed_town/VPH/VPHnews/

The staff in Bologna will continue to moderate this news
concentration as part of the LHDL project, but the news must be
generated by each of you; go to the relative folder in VPH Square,
select News or Events item from the "add a new item" menu, compile
it, and submit it for review. Also, you should help us in
disseminating these news items. The news feed can be subscribed in
RSS format here:
feed://www.biomedtown.org/biomed_town/VPH/VPHnews/RSS
If your technology support it, you are welcome to subscribe this feed
and re-publish on your project/organisation web site, so that also
your group is always updated on what is going on.

The STEP Public Forums will continue to exist. The VPH Newsletter
will be generated every month, and posted on the relative forum. If
you are not subscribed yet, the link below will add your name to the
distribution list:
http://www.biomedtown.org/biomed_town/VPH/StepPublic/VPH-News/pt_subscribe

The step action public forum, which is the forum/mailing list from
which you are receiving this message now will remain active, and
should in my opinion provide the main discussion forum to our
community. The scope will change a bit; we shall focus more on
science and less on policies and lobbying. From now on the forum is
fully moderated, and thus I invite any Biomed Town citizen involved
with VPH research to post freely to this forum. You can do it from
the web interface:
http://www.biomedtown.org/biomed_town/VPH/StepPublic/step-public
Only if you are subscribed to the forum, you can also post messages
by send emails to this address: bt-step-public@biomedtown.org.

The Want/Offer VPH Board service was created for conference #2, but
we decided to leave it active afterward. You can use it to post
useful resources. I suggest that it could be used to ask-offer
participation in VPH consortia.
http://www.biomedtown.org/biomed_town/VPH/VPHboard/

The VPH Public Presentations folder contains links to a collection of
dissemination material developed during the STEP action. If you need
to evangelise others on the VPH, you are welcome to use this material
freely. Also, if you generate additional dissemination material
(pictures, slide shows, movies) related to your VPH research, you can
share the download link with the rest of us here.
http://www.biomedtown.org/biomed_town/VPH/VPHppt/

The VPH-related projects & resources folder is a listing of research
projects around the world that are related to the VPH. Make sure
your project is listed here.
http://www.biomedtown.org/biomed_town/VPH/VPHrelatedprojects/

The VPH Definitions folder contains a copy of the WiKi collection we
wrote during the STEP consensus process. From now on this is the
copy that will be maintained by our community, if a
revision/extension is needed.
http://www.biomedtown.org/biomed_town/VPH/step-definitions/

Last, but not least, the World Integrative Research Initiative folder
contains the WIRI Agreement. This is a expression of good will that
integrative research projects are signing, so as to have a shared
agenda, but also to demonstrate that we are worldwide community.
http://www.biomedtown.org/biomed_town/VPH/wiri/WIRIAgreement

If you want your consortium to subscribe this agreement, please write
to me directly.

That's all folks, sorry for the long message. It was fun; let see if
we can keep up with the life after STEP.

Best regards

Marco Viceconti
STEP, Scientific Coordinator



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MARCO VICECONTI, PhD (viceconti@tecno.ior.it)
Laboratorio di Tecnologia Medica tel. 39-051-6366865
Istituti Ortopedici Rizzoli fax. 39-051-6366863
via di barbiano 1/10, 40136 - Bologna, Italy

Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright in the forest of the night,
what immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?
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Opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer