2025 GIGA Annual Report | 3 of Liège is complete, that is to say that it brings together all professional training courses that play a role in the context of human health; the growing proximity, particularly in various GIGA research units, to colleagues from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. These considerations lead the Faculty of Medicine to set up “Student-Researcher” mandates in 2008 to encourage clinical researcher vocations among young medical students. This initiative was joined by that of the Léon Fredericq Foundation several years ago to occasionaly replace the FNRS to cover half the salary of young doctors who submitted their application to the FNRS and who were well evaluated by the scientific committee but not taken on as a research fellow due to a lack of financial resources at the FNRS. These proactive policies, implemented by the Faculty of Medicine, the University Hospital and the Léon Fredericq Foundation, are bearing fruit. Indeed, in 2021 (the year of the last count in this area), there were 66 clinical researchers at the FNRS in the French Community in Belgium, 25 of whom worked both at the Liège University Hospital and in a GIGA laboratory. If we «normalize» the expected number of clinical researchers we should expect at the Faculty of Medicine by taking into account the number of Master’s medical students, we should have only 14. This promising observation, however, should not lead us to rest on our laurels. It is indeed essential to continue integrating clinicians into our research laboratories. Moreover, it is also crucial, at both the Faculty and University Hospital level, to ensure that these clinical researchers remain motivated in both their activities after completing their doctorate. It is indeed the responsibility of a Faculty of Medicine and a University Hospital to transform the alarming observation of a few years ago, namely that clinical researchers are an endangered species, into a new encouraging observation: that clinical researchers are an evolving species. Bernard Rogister, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Medicine Full Professor ULiège Head of the Laboratory of Nervous system disorders and therapy Treasurer of the Léon Fredericq Foundation
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk1ODY=