Medical Imaging with Deep Learning: A Guide for Virtual Events

This document is an ‘everything you need to know about virtual MIDL events’ guide for prospective organizers. It lists details about the aim and scope of MIDL online events, opportunities and responsibilities of prospective organizers as well as what is handled by the Board and the MIDL Foundation.

Aims and Scope

The MIDL Foundation was founded in 2018 with the aim of organizing a yearly international conference called MIDL (https://midl.io).

In response to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, we, the MIDL Board, have recognized the need to expand our events beyond the annual conference. While our annual conference remains a cornerstone of our community, we have made the decision to host additional online events throughout the year. By doing so, we can keep our community engaged and connected, regardless of their location or ability to attend the annual conference in person. The online events also provide a platform for increased transparency and accessibility, allowing more people to participate and benefit from the knowledge shared. Furthermore, hosting online events provides a chance to reduce unnecessary travel, contributing positively to the environment and cost savings. We firmly believe that hosting regular online events is vital to maintaining a strong sense of community and ensuring a consistent experience for all of our attendees.

We aim for four online events per year: spring symposium, summer session, autumn academy, winter workshop.

How to host a MIDL virtual event?

Do not worry: We will take care of hosting the event and provide a stage for your workshop (or whatever you might have in mind). You are providing content, your ideas, presentations, parts of the workshop, speakers; you name it. Teams of colleagues are warmly welcome, we can also help you connect with peers. In general, we are quite open regarding the topic, which could cover scientific methodology, but also soft skills, personal growth, career planning or other subjects that you feel to be relevant for the MIDL community. To get a rough idea of potential topics, please find the annual event cycle below.

We are very flexible, so if you have any idea, please do get in touch and we can discuss!

What do you get from us?

As mentioned before, we will take care of the “backend” so that you can fully focus on the content of your event. In general, we will provide the following support:

  • we take care of the complete organization around the event: from advertising, registration to the provision of the location (GatherTown or Zoom);
  • we create a page on the MIDL website with all the necessary information;
  • we are available to provide advice and assistance during preparation;
  • we provide contacts to peers for potential support.

Annual Events Calendar

Our vision is to aim for four virtual events per year that consistently take place annually: Spring Symposium, Summer Session, Autumn Academy and Winter Workshop.

These events focus on different target groups, ranging from conference novices over young PhD students to PostDocs and young PIs. In addition, there will be technical workshops that might be beneficial for everyone in this community.

Some of these events have already come to life, others are still waiting to be filled with life. And this is where you might enter the game...

For example, a MIDL Online year could look like this:

Virtual event timeline

How to get involved?

The first step is quite easy: Just write a mail to [email protected] and [email protected] If you already have more concise ideas, it helps if you already provide details on:

  • event name;
  • target audience;
  • short description;
  • expected number of participants;
  • draft of program;
  • short CV of organizers.

But do not worry: If you only have a vague idea and are unsure about these things, please do get in contact anyway and we will figure out the details together.