Annual Report
Letter from the President

The President of TRTF, Peter A. Rinck, sum­ma­riz­es the main to­pics of this year's An­nual Coun­cil Meet­ing.

Dear Friends,

his year has mixed up the world and with it the sche­dul­ed af­fairs of the Found­ation. The An­nual Coun­cil Meet­ing was ar­rang­ed as a tele­phone con­fe­rence. The major de­ci­sion was to can­cel or post­pone all con­fe­ren­ces. The new dates will be or are an­nounc­ed on the re­spect­ive page of this web­site.

However, the general situation of the Foundation is positive. The restructuring some years ago has brought new flexibility and diversity. Gladly, today we see that the way chosen was good and very successful.

 The Magnetic Resonance Textbook. With more than one million page views, the e-Learning website magnetic-resonance.org continues to be one of the most at­tract­ive online learn­ing plat­forms to study the fun­da­mentals of a scientific discipline. The English and Spanish versions as well as the Chinese beta-version were released to­ge­ther with an updated 11th English version in 2017.

The conclusions drawn from publishing the elec­tro­nic text­book on magnetic resonance basics were summarized in a detailed and critical Rinckside column. In consequence, the 12th edition of the textbook was published in print again in 2018, with a corrected reprint in 2020.

 Round Table Meetings and Colloquia. The thirty anniversary conference on MR contrast agents Contrast-Enhanced Biomedical Imaging — Standing at the Crossroads was de­vot­ed to new de­ve­lop­ments in mag­ne­tic re­so­nan­ce con­trast agents — and a re­view of the past 40 years. The two-day meeting turned into an exceptional platform to present and follow-up developments and results in the field since the introduction of such agents.

 Rinckside, the more than 30 year old column on “Medi­cal Imag­ing, Scien­ce, and Beyond” was integrated into the chapters of The Round Table Foundation. By receiving an ISSN, it turned into an officially citable scientific journal — small, but present. It is now listed by the German National Library as a serial publication, and registered with the ISSN International Center in Paris. Its scope was widened in 2018. New layouts for users with mobile devices and for laptops/desktops will be available in late 2020.

 e-Teaching Courses. TRTF's e-Teaching of scientific English, part of the Virtual Campus Initiative, was discontinued. The main reason was the lack of basic knowledge of the participants, in English, in writing, and in scientific and research basics.

Lessons were arranged on a VLE (virtual learning platform), a virtual classroom where participants can see and talk to the teacher and their fellow students. Students of different levels enrolled, but most of them were found not to be qualified for the required tasks; e-learning was also disturbed by the individual surroundings of the students. It was con­clud­ed that courses like these should be run by academic in­sti­tu­tions or dedicated language schools on their premises face to face with a teacher several times a week for at least one year, if pos­sib­le personalized for individual students.

 Virtual Campus Initiative. The — learning — experience gained from the Virtual Campus Initiative has led to an expansion of the objectives of the Ethics and Philosophy Chapter; the revitalization of scientific and research codes of standards, honesty, integrety, and the imperative knowledge of fundamental scientific and research principles will be included in future discussions and proposals.

 The Pro Academia Prize. The Prize for 2019 was award­ed to Leonor Beleza of Lisbon, Portugal, as the mainstay of the boards, councils, teams and all collaborators of the Champalimaud Foundation and the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon. Because of the restrictions imposed by the novel Corona virus the Prize Ceremony has been postponed to 2021. The exact date will be announced later. Details can be found on the Pro Academia website. We are proud of this Prize and congratulate the recipients.

More news on the Prize for 2021 can be found on the updated and upgraded Pro Academia website.

 A Small Café. An offspring of Pro Academia is A Small Café, a platform to present thoughts, reflections and views. Two new con­tri­bu­tions were published in 2018/2019.

 Sponsorship. As always: We are happy about and grateful for any sup­port, be it financial or personal — please do not hesitate to join the team. We have found several new sponsors for our Humanitarian Aid Chapter and thus intensify the sup­port for our project in Colombia.

Yours truly,

Prof. Dr. Peter A. Rinck
President of the Council

18 September 2020

---