On 15th March, Andy, Uschi and Jennifer travelled to Bristol to participate in the first technical action review meeting for the EU FET MagnaPharm Project. The projects’ previous gathering was for the annual meeting in Nejmegen in January of this year which was the first instance which had all Post Doctoral Research Assistants (PDRAs) in place for each of the four consortium members.

The evening before the technical action review we were led on a mini walking tour of Bristol by Dr. Simon Hall (PI) and Jason Potticary (PDRA) from Bristol University before reaching the Cosy Club restaurant which we enjoyed a relaxing tapas-style meal.

The technical action review was conducted by 3 external independent experts in aspects of pharmaceutical sciences and magnetist. In attendance to assess the innovation and IP of the project was Man-Sze Li as innovation expert and also Adriana Godeanu Metz chairing the meeting as the representative European Commission Project Officer.

The meeting aimed to assess the ongoings of the project objectives to date, management of the project from administrative and each consortium member standpoint, potential for IP and disemmination objectives. To facilitate the assessment, the workpackage leader from each consortium member presented a talk addressing each point and how they fed into other workpackages of the project.

Prior to the close of the meeting, we were given a tour of the Magnet Laboratory where Simon, Jason and Charlie Hill (PhD Student) from Bristol University showed us the high-powered electronmagnet setup where the polymorphs of the pharmaceutical crystals are grown.

The meeting concluded with positive feedback from the reviewers and encouraging suggestions to continue the project with continued enthusiasm ahead of the next consortium meeting in May, held in University College London.