Dear Friends,
It was great to see so many familiar faces and to meet so many bright, new and enthusiastic Y-ECCO Members at the recent 21st ECCO Congress in Stockholm.
Prior to the Congress, despite the cold weather of Stockholm, we warmly welcomed two new members of the Y-ECCO Committee: Judith Wellens (Belgium) and Marieke Barnhoorn (The Netherlands). We also bid a fond farewell to Gabriele Dragoni (Italy) and our outgoing chair, Robin Dart (United Kingdom). I want to say a huge thank you to Gabriele and Robin for all their hard work and contributions over the years.
We then opened with our 12th Y-ECCO Science Workshop on the afternoon of Wednesday, February 18, just prior to the start of the main Congress. The Y-ECCO Science Workshop was a resounding success, with approximately 100 attendees. As well as many brilliant presentations by early career researchers and clinicians, there were insightful and inspiring keynote talks covering clinical, translational and laboratory science aspects from our expert faculty comprising Marietta Iacucci, Petra Bacher and Debby Laukens.
The ECCO Congress itself was jam-packed with many excellent talks, including several highlights from Y-ECCO Members. We would like to congratulate all Y-ECCO Members whose abstracts were selected for oral, digital oral or poster presentations, including the five Y-ECCO Abstract Award winners for 2026 (John P. Thomas, Angela Sanzo Machuca, Luke Hanna, Dan Lintao and Olle Grannö).
As we now look forward to the year ahead, I would like to encourage all Y-ECCO Members to check out the ECCO Literature Reviews, which are written by Y-ECCO Members from around the world and are now published online in JCC Plus. This is a great way to get involved as a Y-ECCO Member and I would encourage anybody interested in making a contribution to reach out to Florian Tran or Marieke Barnhoorn from our Y-ECCO Committee.
I would like to signpost that applications will open soon for new members of the Y-ECCO Committee, so please do keep a lookout for that. We encourage all eligible Y-ECCO Members to consider applying and to help us in our goal of supporting training and education opportunities for Y-ECCO Members around the world. Stay tuned for more opportunities to become involved, including for details about the highly anticipated next iteration of the Y-ECCO Mentorship Forum in 2027!
With that I wish you all a great year ahead.
Nuru Noor
Y-ECCO Chair
