• FORTRESS is an open forum, bringing together sarcoma scientists in different stages of their career.
• FORTRESS is a place to share ideas, concepts, and hurdles rather than final results.
• FORTRESS is to share the fun of being a sarcomologist.
• We want active, informal exchange between participants, hopefully leading to joint projects and sharing material.
• We program short and hopefully provocative presentations as brain teasers.
• We expect more personal brainstorming than ex-cathedra presentations.
• We want to connect participants by scientific speed dating.
• We provide plenty of room and time for in-depth discussions.
• We have a social program facilitating the scientific exchange of ideas.

The personal interaction between participants has highest priority for us and we therefore keep the meeting very informal. We purposely restrict the number of participants, also based on the outstanding feedback from our attendees of the past meetings. Participation is by invitation only, as we want to bring together creative minds with a common research agenda.

Please help us identifying the most relevant, curious and motivated participants who would gain the most from the meeting and who could help us achieving our ambitious goals for the FORTRESS series.

If you or someone from your team would be interested to give a short talk, please provide us now with a suggested topic for FORTRESS 2025. Please also let us know if there is a particular session that you believe will be of overarching interest for all attendees. Once we oversee who will be able to come we will design a program around certain themes that will hopefully be interesting and thought-provoking.

Time for individual presentations will be restricted, as we want to stimulate as much as possible the networking and discussion between scientists rather than to have a passive audience. We strongly to encourage to present posters that could provoke discussions around certain hot topics. We will provide printing service for the posters if required. 

We have several break-out rooms that will connect people with matching research focus and you may already suggest a breakout session that participants could join. We will also extend our very successful 'scientific speed dating' effort between participants, one of the favourite parts of the program according to many of our attendees in the past years.

We are also offering space for private meetings, not directly linked to the FORTRESS research program.

Since 2024 onwards we will also try to provide opportunities for participants to arrange project meetings on site, with or without a direct link with FORTRESS. If you need a room to meet please let us know, we’ll arrange that for you. You would be responsible for content and logistics of those side activities.

FORTRESS is non-for-profit and does not receive any funding from industry. Our self-defined role is to facilitate the meeting and to provide the required infrastructure, with some basic structural funding. We are charging a symbolic but mandatory donation fee of € 150 to all participants including us organizers, which will help us to cover at least parts of the costs for catering, meeting logistics and social events and allow us to use the scientific charity support only for the scientific aspects of FORTRESS.

This fee will have to be paid at time of registration, prior to the meeting. Please consider your payment of the symbolic fee as a definitive commitment to join us for the whole 2 ½ day event, as we restrict the numbers of participants. If you change your plans let us know at you earliest convenience. Travel and accommodation will have to be arranged by you, otherwise this purely academic initiative would not be feasible. The symbolic donation is non-refundable.

• FORTRESS is a non-for-profit, purely academic initiative.
• Independent from industry, no commercial exhibition, no hidden sponsorship, no nonsense
• All work done, all time spent, all travel done by the organizers is voluntary.
• UZ/KU Leuven and Westdeutsches Tumorzentrum Universität Duisburg Essen support the meeting in-kind by giving the Steering Committee time to prepare, attend, host and run the event.
• We consider ourselves as facilitators, the scientific content must come from all of you.
• Funding from Barts Weg and Sarkomtour covers basic costs for renting the venue and for catering.
• Social events are funded by your donations.
• If you want to support FORTRESS in the future, please donate to either cause

Please note: your participation to the meeting is subsidised by us, so if your plans change let us know ASAP.