The CRC SmallData got together for its yearly scientific retreat last week at Schloss Reinach. The aim of the event was to share what has been done over the past year, to present and discuss future plans for the CRC, and to encourage further collaboration between old and new members.
Day 1 Highlights:
The event kicked off with some heartfelt opening remarks from the CRC’s speaker, Harald Binder. He warmly welcomed everyone, gave an overview of the retreat’s agenda, and introduced the potential new associated researchers. The group then broke into working groups to discuss the current status of the research projects and to formulate questions for the next sessions.
After the plenary, researchers were invited to attend parallel sessions in the fields of mathematics, computer science, statistics/systems modelling and biomedicine, where each research project gave an updated account of their work to the other members in their respective fields and addressed the questions developed by the general audience during the previous working groups.
At the end of the day, all researchers came together again for a plenary session to share the highlights of the day’s sessions, followed by the General Assembly where our CRC speaker, Harald Binder, our SMART representative, Nadine Binder, and our Equal Opportunities & Diversity spokesperson, Meropi Karakioulaki, presented the progress made over the past year and future plans for their respective branches.
After a productive day of work, the team shared a delicious dinner together at Schloss Reinach’s restaurant, followed by an evening of fun scientific exchange and networking.
Day 2 Highlights:
After a hearty breakfast at the hotel, the group split into separate tailored sessions for Principal Investigators, Doctoral Researchers and Postdoctoral Researchers in order to better address future goals and challenges within each group.
Then it was time for the first round of parallel sessions, where researchers with experience in topics of current scientific relevance within the CRC, such as causality, synthetic data and PFN foundation models, amongst others, presented those topics to other interested members. The goal of these sessions was to further discuss how best to work in these areas in the future and to provide a common ground for collaboration. The results of these sessions were then shared with the rest of the audience in the corresponding plenary session, giving further opportunity for other researchers to join in the collaborative work.
After lunch and coffee, researchers reconvened for a final round of parallel sessions and the afternoon plenary session, where a number of proposed collaborative activities for the coming period were presented. The session ended with closing words from our speaker and the promise of an exciting next season for SmallData.
We can’t thank all of you enough for your contributions and can’t wait to see what the SmallData Retreat in 2026 will bring!
Institute of Medical Biometry and Statistics,
Faculty of Medicine and Medical Center –
University of Freiburg
