On 4 and 5 May 2026 early-career researchers from the second cohort* of the YoungNAKO Graduate Programme met for the first time. The two-day kick-off meeting was dedicated to getting to know one another, exchanging ideas on research topics and jointly planning future activities.
Getting to know one another across disciplinary boundaries
The day started with a creative icebreaker: participants shared objects representing their daily work – from laptops and to-do lists to coffee grinders and the statistical software R. A bingo game featuring personal clues fostered initial conversations, followed by individual slide presentations introducing themselves and their PhD projects. After a presentation about the German National Cohort (NAKO) and the graduate programme, the day ended with a group dinner.
‘I really enjoyed seeing how people from so many different disciplines can gain valuable insights by working with NAKO data. At the kick-off event, I met experts from the fields of mathematics, pharmacy, medicine, computer science, psychology, veterinary medicine, political science and many other disciplines!’, reports Isabelle Engel from the University of Heidelberg.
Shaping the programme together
On the second day, the focus was on the programme’s content and the planning of joint activities. Working in small groups, the participants developed ideas for networking formats and cohort activities. The “Faces of YoungNAKO” concept was also presented with a view to raising the programme’s profile.
The kick-off meeting was very well received by the participants overall, particularly the opportunity for everyone to get to know one another in person. An in-person format was clearly preferred over an online format and should therefore be retained for future cohorts and more closely linked to further activities relating to the NAKO and the graduate programme.
‘I am delighted to be taking part in the YoungNAKO postgraduate programme. It is a valuable opportunity to deepen my expertise in population-based epidemiology, data management and analysis alongside my PhD studies. The programme is of particular interest to me as it offers both practical experience and theoretical training using real-world data from the large-scale, population-based NAKO’, said Guash Abay Assefa from the HZI Braunschweig.
Find out more: www.nako.de/YoungNAKO
*In the context of the postgraduate programme, the term ‘cohort’ refers to the participants in the early-career programme.