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Letter from the President

Dear Friends,

et me give you an overview of the performance of the Foundation, casting our eyes back on the last decade and trying to have a look into the future.

The last years have mixed up the world — which has also involved the Found­ation. Still, all in all, the general situation of the Founda­tion is looking good. The restruct­uring some years ago has brought new flexi­bi­lity and diver­sity. Gladly, today we see that the way chosen was good and suc­cess­ful.

The Covid Crisis and the Colombian Children. Due to the circumstances, our partner foundation Fundación Corazones Solidarios in Bogotá had to close its doors for some time but has slowly begun to re-open in late summer 2021. In spite of re­stric­tions, and thanks to gener­ous finan­cial donations received during the Covid period, the children were cared for in the best way possible, and their learning and playing acti­vi­ties continued partly through the internet — when possible.

The members of the foun­da­tion board and the tea­chers accomp­lished a fan­ta­stic job adapt­ing to the cir­cum­stan­ces and have to be con­gratu­lated. We are on standby and hope that the coming months will allow acti­vi­ties to return to normalcy.

Round Table Meetings and Colloquia. The thirty anniversary conference on MR contrast agents Contrast-Enhanced Biomedical Imaging — Standing at the Crossroads was the last major in-person con­feren­ce of TRTF. Later meetings were can­celled or post­poned. Video con­feren­ces were not welcomed by possible parti­ci­pants; they were not considered fitting the style and nature of these meetings — although by now we have turned to hybrid meetings on two occasions. Hopefully, we will gra­du­al­ly re­vert to symposia in the "familiar" way in the future.

Another change in the arrangements of the Round Table Colloquia was the restriction "By invitation only".

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 — see also the publication on Science for Novices by Santiago Ramón y Cajal in A Small Café.

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. All in-person teaching courses were also discontinued.

e-Teaching lessons had been 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.

The following publications have been taken over by TwinTree™ — More on their homepage.

The Magnetic Resonance Textbook. With far 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 12th edition of the textbook was published in print again in 2018, with a corrected 13th edition in 2022. The 14th — e-Learning — edition was published in 2024, updated in 2025; a new Spanish edition is planned for 2026.

Rinckside. Rinckside, the more than 35 years old column on “Medi­cal Imag­ing, Scien­ce, and Beyond” was integrated into the chapters of The Round Table Foundation some years ago. 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 by including "Special Supplements" in addition to the regular columns. New layouts for users with mobile devices and for laptops/desktops were made available in late 2020.

A Small Café. An offspring of Rinckside is A Small Café, a platform to present thoughts, re­flect­ions and views. Every year several new con­tri­bu­tions are published.

The Pro Academia Prize. The Prize for 2021 was award­ed to Klaus Roth of Berlin, Germany. Details for 2023 can be found on the Pro Academia website. We are proud of this Prize and congratulate the recipients. The laureate(s) for 2025 will be an­nounced in late summer 2025.

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