Editorial - April 2022

Dear members of the working group,

We hope that this newsletter finds you well, and that your work is returning to normal again after the COVID pandemic. Our thoughts go to those affected by the war in Ukraine.

We are pleased to announce that Professor Antonio Baldini from Naples has been appointed as our new Chair-elect of the WG for 2022-24 and will be Chair in 2024-26. Everyone knows Antonio, and in the past he has served as Treasurer, so we know he will be an excellent addition to the leadership team. Bill Chaudhry will take up the role of Chair in September 2022, and Maurice van den Hoff will continue in a supporting role as Past-chair for these two years. José-Maria Perez-Pomares will complete his duties in September. Though this is still more than 6 months away, we would like to thank him for the enormous amount of work and input he has given to our working group. However, he will remain very active and will continue to devote time to the working group as an editor for the planned second edition of the ESC textbook of Cardiovascular development.

There are several vacancies that will arise for voting members on the Nucleus of our working group this year and elections will be held in the summer. If you are a member and interested in a nucleus position, please contact either Bill or Maurice. Furthermore, in order to vote, or indeed stand for election, you must be a member of our Working Group before the election is announced. If you have not already done so, please could you renew your membership of the DAP WG. Please could you also contact friends and colleagues who may not have received this information, so nobody is missed out and we can all reconnect and meet again.

Whilst rules for travelling are still in place for some countries, and people may have personal reasons for not attending in person, we would like to remind you of two important meetings in the next couple of months. The Frontiers in CardiVascular Biomedicine (FCVB) meeting in Budapest from 29 April to 01 May is still scheduled to take place in person.

A decision regarding the Weinstein meeting in Marseille, 12-14 May 2022, will be made in the next couple of weeks and we will let you know whether the meeting will go ahead and its format as soon as this is done. We dearly hope that we can meet in person in Marseille and discuss our new and exciting research findings during plenary, poster and social events. In the meantime, we would like to draw your attention to the Online TALK of the Young Community of our working group.

On behalf of the Working Group nucleus,

Best Regards,

Maurice, Bill and José-Maria