On February 24, our annual cluster conference “curAMeet” took place on the campus of Mainz University Medical Center.

With the theme “Meet & Connect” our doors were opened wide, allowing us to exchange ideas not only with our current and future curATime members, but also with other parties interested in curATime.

Around 110 guests listened to welcoming remarks from our cluster spokesperson, the Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of Science and Health, the University Medical Center Mainz, and Project Management Jülich, took in important research findings from our keynote speakers (Fu Siong, Ng, Joost Sluijter, Aimo Kannt, and Kluas Ley), and learned about gamification and serious games during Philipp Busch's Impulse Talk.

In addition to these impressive presentations, the important progress made in all curATime projects was presented either during the poster session, in the presentation of our lighthouse projects, or in the research project presentations by some of the doctoral students.

During the breaks, participants took the opportunity to get to know each other beyond the existing network and exchanged ideas about existing and potential projects.

We would like to thank all participants and contributors for this successful day.

Our cluster member Michael Molitor summarizes:

"curAMeet was a great experience for me, especially the opportunity for interdisciplinary exchange between biomedical research and AI science and finding a "common" language here was outstanding. A unique platform for innovation, networking and scientific progress within the framework of curATime’. It’s amazing how sharing experiences can spark new ideas and future collaborations with current and new academic and industry partners."

On March 23 and 24, 2026, curAHack took place once again as an interdisciplinary hackathon, this time at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Kaiserslautern. Around 25 participants took part to tackle current challenges at the intersection of the life sciences, medicine, and artificial intelligence.

This year’s challenges also covered a broad range of topics: from improving the resolution of cell cycle phases by combining single-cell RNA and chromatin data, to the targeted investigation of weaknesses in AlphaFold predictions, to AI-assisted analysis of ultrasound images. Another team worked on a machine learning model to predict individual cardiovascular risk based on microbiome data. The challenges were proposed by the curATime core partners.

Once again this year, prior knowledge of bioinformatics was not the main focus. Rather, curAHack once again provided a platform for interdisciplinary exchange, creative problem-solving, and collaborative work on innovative solutions. Participants discussed, programmed, and brainstormed during several intensive team sessions. Shared breaks and lunches also provided opportunities for networking and interdisciplinary exchange in an open and collaborative atmosphere.

The event concluded on Tuesday afternoon with presentations of the challenge results and the award ceremony for the best solution. This year, Challenge 3—“Rethinking Ultrasound”—from DFKI emerged as the winner. The team impressed with an approach to weakly supervised segmentation of cardiac and vascular ultrasound images. The goal of the project was to reduce the high effort required for pixel-accurate annotations by training the model using only a few point markers instead of complete segmentation masks. This was intended to enable efficient and robust image analysis.

We can conclude: In addition to innovative ideas, exciting potential solutions emerged in a short period of time within a dedicated and collaborative work environment.

As a proud co‑organiser, curATime looks back on TFmed 2026 as a strong example of how collaboration across innovation clusters can amplify scientific progress. The joint organisation with the Clusers4Future PROXIDRUGS and CNATM highlighted complementary expertise in RNA technologies, drug development, and translational research, creating a unique environment for interdisciplinary dialogue.

The conference programme reflected this diversity, covering a broad spectrum of therapeutic frontiers — from novel nucleic acid–based modalities and delivery technologies to immunology, oncology, and disease‑driven translational approaches. TFmed thus served not only as a conference, but as a living interface between discovery, development, and application.

TFmed 2026 featured particularly strong engagement from the curATime core partners, including TRON, University Medical Center Mainz, and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). Their scientific contributions underlined the depth and breadth of expertise within the curATime consortium and its commitment to translation‑driven research.

The conference also marked an important milestone for curATime Phase 2, with active participation from new partners joining the cluster. Inspiring talks and poster presentations by Robert Zweigerdt (Hannover Medical School), as well as Boris Greber and Thomas Berger (Catalent), added valuable perspectives and further enriched the scientific discussions.

curATime extends its sincere thanks to Ivan Đikić, Johnny Kim, and Stefan Engelhardt for bringing people together and helping shape TFmed into a vibrant platform that goes beyond disciplinary and institutional boundaries.

We are proud to host the next TFmed, 2028 in Mainz!