SP0087 Long Term Benefits from International Exchange

A combination of different international exchange experiences during my research career, including international conferences and EU-funded collaborative consortia, a shorter stay in a lab abroad during my PhD studies, and a 5-year long postdoc period abroad, has given me fantastic opportunities and benefits. During this lecture I will reflect and comment on these experiences, using my research interest, which is autoimmunity to citrullinated proteins in rheumatoid arthritis, as a backdrop. We will visit Sweden, Holland, Poland, the US and the UK, and we will talk about professional networks, getting to know important people, learning not only new techniques, but new ways of thinking and new approaches, independence, improved communication skills, and we will talk about how the distance between countries and laboratories become smaller with international exchange. Disclosure of Interest None declared