Dear colleagues,

It is with great pleasure that we invite you to attend the 14th International Child Neurology Congress from May 1st – 5th, 2016 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The theme of ICNC 2016 will be:
“Bridging Worlds; Child Neurology from a Global Perspective”.

The congress will reach and unite professionals in pediatric neurology from all over the world by offering a program that is of global relevance and has a significant educational impact, and by facilitating participation of delegates from all countries.

With our innovative program format, we will offer:

• complimentary breakfast teaching sessions
• afternoon meet-the-expert interactive tutorial sessions
• evening masterclasses
• four morning parallel sessions, that will each include 3 lectures given by experts in the field, covering current state-of-the-art, controversies or consensus, and expected developments
• each day, one of these parallel sessions will be specifically devoted to differences in diagnostics and treatment of pediatric neurological disorders across the world
• four afternoon platform sessions that start with an introductory lecture given by an experienced chair
• lunch symposia on specific child neurology topics, selected from submitted session proposals
• 25 travel bursaries, as well as significantly reduced registration fees, for participants from low-resource countries.

The 2016 ICNC meeting will be held at the Amsterdam RAI Convention Center, a modern venue that is within ten minutes reach of Schiphol Amsterdam Airport, providing direct connections with most continents and many countries (100 non-stop intercontinental and 300 direct European destinations). The venue is close to the heart of historical Amsterdam. Thousands of hotel rooms in all possible price categories, ranging from luxury hotel chains to low-budget accommodation, are available within walking distance from the conference venue.

We kindly invite you all to submit proposals for lunch symposia (further information available on www.icnc2016.org, website open from May 1st) and abstracts (online submission open from June 1st).

Please mark your calendar! We look forward to welcoming you all in the beautiful city of Amsterdam, during the season of tulips, for the 14th ICNC from May 1st to 5th 2016.

On behalf of the organizing, scientific and educational committee, and the Dutch Society of Pediatric Neurology,

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Welcome from ICNA

On behalf of the International Child Neurology Association, it is my great pleasure to welcome you to the 14th International Child Neurology Congress being held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, from May 1-5th, 2016.  Our congress theme is ‘Bridging Worlds’ with the aim of providing an appreciation of Childhood Neurological Disorders from a Global Perspective with strong representation from all six major geographic regions. The scientific program will feature internationally recognized experts who will provide the latest advances in different subspecialties of child neurology combined with a strong educational program through breakfast courses, meet the expert sessions and master classes. We also hope to facilitate open dialogue between clinicians and neuroscientists from resource-limited and resource- enriched regions in order to lay the groundwork for future collaborative research networks. These networks would link clinicians involved in the careful phenotyping of unique clinical populations afflicted with specific neurological diseases with researchers in state-of-the-art research laboratories directed toward characterizing the genotypes and creating in vitro and in vivo disease models, in order to increase understanding of the underlying pathophysiological disease mechanisms, for the development of specific interventional therapies. These new therapies could then be translated back to the clinical populations and be rigorously tested through prospective randomized double-blind controlled clinical trials to evaluate the true efficacy of the new therapies. This would benefit the affected children and their families, their caregivers and the investigators, thus moving the field forward. This will also set the stage for the launching of our research portals on www.ICNApedia.org for the linking of clinical and basic science investigators.

Several exciting new ICNA initiatives will be launched at the ICNC2016 as follows:

1. There will be a presentation of the results of the first funded Global Burden of Disease Seed Grants. These competitive seed grant opportunities, which have been offered through ICNApedia.org to neurology residents, fellows and junior staff, aim to capture pilot data on the global burden of neurological morbidity, quality of life, and mortality specific to major neurological diseases in resource-limited regions (e.g. CNS Tb, HIV, malaria, CP). These pilot proposals consist of 2-3 month international fellowships linked to established investigators at target sites which have high prevalence for a given disease (e.g. current sites include South Africa, Botswana, India) where study ethics approval is in place along with robust epidemiological study design. This pilot data will then form the basis for future large scale epidemiologic studies by the senior investigator with the ultimate goal of generating recommendations for targeted cost-effective, site-specific improvements in health care policies, in conjunction with the local health care services and infrastructure (Health Policy Level).

2. A symposium will be dedicated to a review of the integral components of solid clinical research methodology and rigorous study design along with the application of appropriate statistical methodology. There will also be a review of the CONSORT guidelines for writing clinical research papers and information will be provided on existing courses and sites offering training in these methodologies.

3. The ICNC2016 will also mark the launching and first meeting of the Council of the Future Leaders of ICNA who will be comprised of outstanding, regionally nominated senior child neurology residents, fellows and junior faculty who will meet in Amsterdam to establish their mandate, goals for the future clinical, research and educational programs of ICNA, metrics for success in achieving these goals and perceived obstacles. They will also form the first editorial board for the Resident and Fellow section of our new electronic journal JICNA.

Please join us for a scientifically stimulating ICNC2016 program in an atmosphere of warm collegiality set in the elegant city of Amsterdam which embodies Old World Charm amongst seas of vibrant multicoloured tulips and myriads of historic canals and bridges in the home of the magnificent works of Van Gogh and Rembrandt.

Ingrid Tein MD

President, The International Child Neurology Association

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Dear Colleagues

The spread of scientific and clinical child neurological knowledge and expertise among the congress participants from all different backgrounds has been an important priority for the Educational Committee of ICNC 2016. For this reason we offer an extensive, high level, innovative and complimentary teaching program.

The teaching program consists of daily breakfast courses that introduce and refresh the knowledge on the leading topic of the day.  Topics are related to the important CNS neuroanatomical structure and its most relevant disorders. They are: Grey matter on Monday, White matter on Tuesday, Cerebellum on Wednesday and Muscle and Peripheral Nerves on Thursday

Two interactive meet the expert tutorial sessions and case consultations with experts in the field will be organised in the late afternoon on Monday (Movement Disorders) and Tuesday (MRI Pattern recognition)

The two evening teaching classes cover: Basic principles and clinical relevance of immune mediated diseases (Monday) and Neurophysiology (Tuesday). Please note that registration for this free teaching class is necessary. A complementary light dinner buffet preceding the teaching class is served for registered participants..

The teaching program is not only aimed at trainees but also at qualified paediatric neurologists who want to refresh their knowledge on different topics. We invite you all to participate in this attractive program.

Coriene Catsman-Berrevoets

Chair of the ICNC 2016 educational committee

Dear colleagues,

We are very happy to welcome you at the 14th International Child Neurology Congress in Amsterdam, to share with each other the modern knowledge – as well as remaining and novel questions – on a wide range of topics in pediatric neurology.

Science is all about everyday, spontaneous experiences and observations, and the results of planned experiments and studies. And that’s what we’ll offer you: from posters of educational case reports, to lectures about large multi-center randomized controlled trials; from instructive plenary lectures by highly experienced colleagues who’ll review current knowledge for you, to interesting interactive sessions that will allow many colleagues to share experiences.

You can imagine that we have carefully chosen the congress theme “Bridging Worlds; Child Neurology from a Global Perspective”. Our scientific program will reflect this theme and the congress will thus be built up by input from professionals in pediatric neurology from all over the world. The other way around, ICNC2016 will also contribute to your carrier and further scientific development, wherever you’re from.

Excellent speakers have been invited and have already confirmed their lectures. Many, and also very diverse lunch symposia have already been submitted. We expect that many exciting abstracts for free presentations and posters will soon be submitted (by you!) too.

Our website will be updated frequently: please have a closer look at the scientific program as soon as it is available.

We’re looking forward to meet you, to teach you, and to learn from you in Amsterdam!

Michèl Willemsen

Chair of the ICNC 2016 scientific committee