Charles Hoppel (UMDF): .. First, let me say how great an experience it was to attend the Mitophysiology Society meeting last month.  I was greatly impressed by the quality of the science and especially by the hospitality.  I thank you very much for making the meeting so great and for making my participation effortless. I presented the idea of developing a continuing relationship (of UMDF) with the Mitochondrial Physiology Society ... Again, I want to express my thanks to you for the wonderful meeting in the Alps.

Mike Marusich (MitoSciences): ..thanking you again for the wonderful MiP2005.  It was a very good time - both the science and the company.  ... Hopefully we can also support the next MiP mtg in the Lake District.  I look forward to it.

Keith Garlid: .. congratulations on a wonderful MiP.

Cecilia Giulivi: .. Should I say again how much I enjoyed this meeting again? I think I'll miss Schrocken next time.

Zdenek Drahota: .. the meeting was exellent, everybody was happy, .. Schroecken-dependent.

Guy Brown: ... Thanks again for a brilliantly organised meeting.

Max Gassmann: .. I want to thank you coridally for organizing and holding the MiP2005 Meeting. I had an exceptionally good time, good talks, and many mountain and river activities. You put a lot of energy into it .. and it was worthwhile!

Josie McConnell: .. Thank you so much for organizing such a brilliant conference. Piran and I really enjoyed it.

Werner Koopman: .. Additional funding for MIP2007 might be obtained from IUBMB. General site: http://www.iubmb.unibe.ch/

Specific meeting site: http://www.iubmb.unibe.ch/Standing_Orders/Guidelines/Guidelines_Congr.htm

Andrey Kozlov: .. it was a great pleasure for all of us to attend MiP2005. The highest level of scientific presentations, efficient conference schedule and nice environment made this conference very particular. There is one thing that I forgot to introduce. And this is a possible link between MiP and European shock society. As you know we organise regularly Vienna shock meeting and Wiggers conferences. You have attended both of them. I am going to take an active position to introduce mitochondrial sessions in those meetings and believe that this could be an additional medicine-orientated activity of MiP. I believe it can be very useful.

Steven Hand: .. Hi Erich and the 'Team', thanks so much for the great organizational efforts during the MiP 2005. It was a superb meeting. Just a short story to emphasize how well organized everything was.  When I arrived back in Innsbruck by bus the morning after the meeting, and took a taxi to the Hotel Mozart (as you recall, you recommended this hotel over copious quantities of schnapps at the Hotel Tannberg bar).  I told the hotel clerk at the front desk my name and that I was an associate of Erich Gnaiger and he had recommended the Hotel.  The desk clerk said they were very, very full, but she looked down at the ledger and then gave me a puzzled look -- "But Mr. Hand, you already have reservations for tonight that were booked on Sept. 7, and your taxi to the airport in the morning has been reserved for 4:45 am."  WOW, now that is planning ahead!  What a relief that was. Thanks to you, Brigitte, Eve and the others for excellent work.

Richard Porter: .. Thanks for a great conference. Enjoyed it immensely. Larnt a lot. Got at least two new collaborators. Any many new friends. Don’t drink all that whiskey at once

Patrick Schrauwen: .. I would like to express my thanks for involving me in the meeting. I enjoyed the meeting a lot, met nice and interesting colleagues and learned a lot! Look forward to the next meeting

Susana Cadenas: .. Just a quick message to congratulate you for the success of MiP2005. It was really interesting and the atmosphere as relaxed and friendly as it usually is in the courses and meetings that you organize.

Francis Sluse: .. May I congratulate you for the high quality level of MiP2005!! (except for the weather) . I even did not see the top of your montains!!!!!!! So no price for you as you could not force the nature to be kind with us! I really enjoyed this large variety of subjects we touched in a so short time (only 3 days!). Moreover no speaker has had time to become boring! Good idea finally this 10 min talks.

Cenk Aral: .. I would like to thank you to give me an oppurnity to attend MiP2005. In addition to the natural beauty of Schröcken, scientific meetings and meeting with severity of scientist among the world made this conference wonderful. Thank you very much to all organization comittee. On the other hand, I have a question about MiP2007. As presented at the last session by Guy C Brown, there is no enough place for more than 150 attendents since it is a nice place with mountains and lakes for tradition of MiP meetings. As presented by you at the meeting, MiP conferences continuously developed with too many registrations from 2002 to 2005 (approx. 160 registration to MiP2005). But unexpectedly MiP 2007 is resticted to 150 persons. And according to my opinion, thats not looking as a success for MiP Society. I am not sure if an explanation exits for this state. But none of the explanations will change this situation until location of MiP2007 changed or more place for more registration arranged. If you remember, I asked for sending my poster abstract to MiP2005 with an e-mail because I was very late. And you wrote me to send my abstract and you will do your best. As a result, my abstract accepted and I found an oppurnity to present my poster at MiP2005. I think next meetings of the MiP Society have to be like this and have to make everything in order to bring too many scientist at the future meetings.

Lech Wojtczak: Dear Erich: Back home, we want to thank you once again for organizing such an excellent and exciting meeting. Both the scientific standard and the technical organization were first class! The only pity was that you had no influence on the weather. But Sunday was acceptable. Perhaps next time ... Best greetings, Joanna, Mariusz and Lech.

Erich Gnaiger: Dear Lech: ... For me the only pity was that there was too little time for more personal discussions. And you do not want to hear about how beautiful the weather turned the day after MiP2005 left Schröcken. Best greetings, Erich.

Mariusz Wiecowski: .. once again I would like to thank you for organizing such interesting and fantastic conference. It was a big pleasure for me to have a chance to present my data there.

Luca Martino: .. I would like to congratulate you for the organization of MIP 2005. Simply wonderful.

Chris Copoper: .. thanks for such a fantastic meeting (and your amazing feat as "Mitochondrial transporter"). I got back safe and sound.

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*  2005-09-16 to 20: MiP2005   *

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2005-08-26: Schröcken is accessible again after heavy rain causing severe floods and landslides in Vorarlberg, Tyrol and Switzerland. Roads to Schröcken were blocked, but no damages occured in the village. In the severely damaged village of Lech, 16 out of 100 hotels had to be evacuated. 1,000 tourists could leave Lech yesterday, after being locked in for days.

Rob Boushel: "Session 1: The MiP 2005 meeting is on the horizon and we thought it appropriate to update you on organizational developments in a timely manner so that you may make necessary arrangements. This year there has been a wealth of enthusiasm in Mitochondrial Physiology 2005 reflected in a large participation response. The organizational strategy for this year is based on maximizing the impact of each thematic session while fostering a scientific environment to advance the field of mitochondrial physiology. The practical approach to reach this

end has been to (1) streamline and integrate key themes in each oral session, (2) combine talks by both established and emerging scientists (Young Investigator Presentations - YiP), (3) build strong poster sessions by themselves that compliment oral sessions, and 4) provide a structure to stimulate meaningful discussion and interaction."

Lech Wojtczak: "I want to congratulate you on the extremely exciting programme. You have managed to collect a great number of excellent experts in various fields of "mitochondriology" and they have proposed exciting subjects for their presentations. .. I can imagine how difficult has it been to classify the multiple subjects into logical categories. However, as effect some related posters or oral presentations appeared in different sessions. Nevertheless, I do not want to suggest any changes. The present situation has an advantage that multiple sessions will be of interest to individual participants."

Vladimir Skulachev: "Unfortunately, the procedure of publication of Biochem. (Moscow) is too slow to publish abstracts in time."

Susanne Arnold: "I would suggest to add the figures to those abstracts which will be selected for publication. ...  How about poster presentations at a fixed time right after lunch – to get an one hour insight and then go for a walk … with something in mind …or if the weather is rainy we simply can stay and have discussions there."

Sergio Papa: "I think it is a good idea to have a poster session as well as to organize poster awards for short oral selected presentations of some posters. ... Abstracts for student presentations should then have up to two illustrations."

Steve Hand: "We clearly need to have posters as part of the meeting, due to the large increase in abstracts. I like the possibility for giving poster awards to young investigators, but are there ideas yet regarding who will carry out the judging and how it will be performed? For example, will the selection be based solely on viewing the posters by designated judges, or also combined with discussions between the judges and the authors during a designated 'poster session'? You had mentioned the 'walks and talks' might be used as part of the selection process, but a problem might be uniformity of coverage - it might be tough to get around to talk with everyone in the poster competition during a mountain walk. .. If there are say only 25 posters, then all judges (maybe 3-4 in number) might be able to evaluate each and every poster. Then, each judge simply selects his/her top six, and an averaged ranking is formed. ... It seems that if we want to offer young investigator awards, then we may need a formal poster session, at a designated time, so that the evaluation can be performed uniformly. Such a poster session then perhaps lessens the need for '3 min poster flashes' during the daily meeting schedule, except of course at the award presentations in Session 12."

Response by Erich Gnaiger: "We have abstracts for 28 Young Investigator Presentations (YIPs), some of which may be selected for oral presentations according to the redommendations of the scientific committee. A "Young Investigator Oral Presentation" may be considered as a special award. The YIP Award committee (see Session 12) can, therefore, operate according to your suggestion, with extended abstracts (up to 2 figures) as an additional aid. Lunch poster flashes may then be reserved for non-YIPs."

Eiji Takahashi: "Because the scientific contents of MiP2005 are rich and covers almost all regions in mitochondrial physiology studies, it might be a good idea that all abstracts (or proceedings, if possible) are published in a print format."

Susana Cadenas: "I agree it would be excellent to have the abstracts published.  ... Regarding the poster session I think it is a good idea to have a fixed number of 6 presentations during session 12, 5+5 min each (18:00-19:00). I would also invite everyone presenting a poster to prepare figures to have their abstracts published. The number of 3 min poster presentations will have to be decided there, depending on the weather. But maybe 3 or 4 posters could be presented at the end of each session. This would take only 9-12 min and still leave enough time for walks and talks during lunch breaks."

Andrey Kozlov: "I want to ask you is whether you have an agreement with somebody to publish the abstracts/papers in a journal? I believe Prof. V. Skulachev could be a good candidate to publish this in his Biochemistry (Mosk)."

Response by Erich Gnaiger: "Your suggestion for publication of the abstracts is excellent, but it might be rather late now. I will contact Prof. Vladimir Skulatchev, and may be you could back-up this approach."

Francis E. Sluse: "Specify poster viewing time ( may be do not give choice between walks and posters!!!!)."

Response by Erich Gnaiger: "It would be great to organize 1-hour poster flashes with follow-up poster viewing/discussion. Specifically in Schröcken, however, we might want to avoid a fixed time for poster flashes in the programme, since the weather factor must be taken into consideration. If we have very bad weather and there is just one day of sunshine, it will not be easy to change a written programme and shift the poster flash from a sunny to a rainy day. For this scenario, it is much easier to organize lunch events spontaneously, including some poster flashes, possibly a controversy discussion, round table, or provide simply time for informal person-to-person interactions. Good weather: "Walks and talks - take your poster into nature"; bad weather: we will fully emphasize the communication around the posters in the hall."

Keith Garlid: "Erich, there seem to be far too many oral presentations. Did I understand from your email that some of them could be posters instead? I think this would be a very good idea."

Josef Houstek: "For a three day meeting with quite a lot of free time (3x4 h) we have too many potential speakers. May be that a parallel session, at least one day, would help."

Response by Erich Gnaiger: "In Schröcken, we do not have the structure for parallel sessions at MiP2005, since now we may expect 60 to 80 participants per parallel session. We can accomodate, however, 160 or more participants in the main lecture hall."

Vilma Borutaite: "Should we also select abstracts for posters? I think it would be a good idea to have more posters  but displayed for shorter time. Otherwise it would be hard to tell people that their abstarcts are not accepted unless we reject those who were late with abstract submission or registration."

Response by Erich Gnaiger: "We will try to provide as much space as possible for posters, to give an opportunity to all active participants to present their work. The time for posters being up, therefore, will depend on the final number of posters and space."

Cecilia Giulivi: "Will we have time for poster presentations? Let's say we select some through a committee and then those selected, get 5-10 min to present them orally. I'd like to give younger colleagues a chance for an oral presentation, especially if the poster is worth it."

Rob Boushel: "I suggest a culminating session (even if you have to cut other things down) with key leaders in the field to summarize what their impressions are of the meeting. Significance!! Future, impact, perspective, inspiration for the horizons. Make this a feature!! Important in my view. MiP has the unique aspect of "integration". That's where all the exciting things happen, and leave open time for Q/A."

General announcements

Oral and poster presentations are limited, although all abstracts are published on the website.