The 20th Alpine Brain Imaging Meeting gathered 231 researchers in Champéry, Switzerland from January 11 to 15, 2026. The largest edition in the meeting’s history!
Twenty years ago, Prof. Patrik Vuilleumier and Prof. Christoph Michel established a neuroscience meeting in the Swiss Alps designed to combine an intensive scientific program with the collegial atmosphere that small, focused gatherings tend to foster. Since then, ABIM has grown into a well-attended annual international event, organised by researchers from the University of Geneva and EPFL, with sessions each afternoon and mornings free for outdoor activities and informal exchange. This 20th edition was the largest in the meeting’s history: 231 participants from 30 countries, 135 posters, 55 more than the previous year, and 28 junior researchers giving oral presentations. Women made up a majority of attendees, with 116 female and 112 male participants! The anniversary also saw the return of a ski race on Wednesday morning, which proved a popular highlight of the social program.
The scientific program spanned four themes across four days: Time and Consciousness, Neural Methods to Predict Behavior, Language and AI, and Brain, Mental Health and Lifestyle. Keynote lectures were delivered by Ray Dolan (UCL), Melanie Boly (University of Wisconsin), Davide Folloni (Mount Sinai), Daniel Margulies (Oxford), Jean Remi King (ENS Paris), Laura Gwilliams (Stanford), Charles Hillman (Northeastern), and Hilleke Hulshoff Pol (Utrecht).
Travel grants funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and ABIM supported four early-career researchers: Alexis Giff (Harvard Medical School), Ryan Law (University of Cambridge), Martina T. Cinca-Tomàs (University of Barcelona), and Davide Orsenigo (University of Turin and CENTAI Institute). All four presented both a short talk and a poster during the week.
The anniversary was celebrated on Thursday evening with an ice-skating aperitif, an inspiring talk by world record-holding alpinist and science communicator Richard Parks, a gala dinner, and a disco night. Best oral presentation prizes (sponsored by Springer) went to Ashleigh Davies (King’s College London), Lina Teichmann (NIH and University of Geneva), and Anna Shpektor (Oxford). Best poster prizes went to Xiaoyan Wu (University of Zurich), Christian Mikutta (University of Bern), and Giovanni Leone (University of Geneva). A post-meeting survey found that 87.9% of respondents considered ABIM very helpful for making new scientific connections.
The 21st edition of ABIM will take place from January 10 to 14, 2027 in Champéry. Registration and further information will be available in autumn 2026 at www.unige.ch/ABIM.
ABIM 2026 was organised by Patrik Vuilleumier, Christoph Michel, Dimitri Van De Ville, Didier Grandjean, Daphné Bavelier, Valentina Borghesani, Frédéric Grouiller, Maria Giulia Preti, Ilaria Sani, Eugénie Cataldo, and Damien Marie. Administrative and IT support was provided by Françoise Defferrard, Estela Lopez Rodriguez, and Frédéric Radeff from the University of Geneva.
ABIM 2026 gratefully acknowledges the support of its sponsors: Swiss National Science Foundation, Université de Genève – Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, CIBM Center for Biomedical Imaging, NCCR Evolving Language, NIRx, Commune de Champéry, ANT Neuro, All Here, and Springer.