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um, welcome. My name is Denise Fitzgerald. I'm professor of Terminology here in Queens. Um, and it is my pleasure to welcome you all to the first joint annual research symposium of the Northern Ireland M s Research Network and the All Ireland M s research network. Um, I'd like to start first in light of the recent passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. The second, we will begin today's proceedings by observing a minute silence, which I invite you to join me in Now. Thank you. Um, as a mark of respect, we have been asked to refrain from posting on social media about this event. Um, so I would request that you don't post to Twitter or Facebook or other social media platforms about our event today or tomorrow. Thank you. I'm going to go through a few housekeeping items. The first is that we have no planned fire alarms. If you hear the fire alarm, it's real. Um, at least as much as an alarm is. And it does require evacuation, which are the evacuation. These are indicated by signs throughout the building. Um, I would like to draw your attention to this leaflet that is around the room. If anybody is here and that hasn't yet registered online, I'd encourage you to scan the QR code so that you can register. This will allow you receive your certificate of attendance. It will allow you browse the online poster hall that we have associated with this event. And it will also allow you to ask questions throughout the entire event. This is running as a hybrid event for the very first time. Um and so those that are here in person can ask a question in person. But you can also posted to the chat here and it will be red out for you if you prefer that. And in a very slight change, the program our chairs today and tomorrow I'm going to swap. And so even Dombroski will be cheering tomorrow. And this afternoon's chair will be Doctor Doctor Imre Lengel. I want to very briefly mention thanks. We will do this in greater detail tomorrow at the end of the event. And obviously you can see from our our initial slide. We're very grateful to our sponsors, but I have to mention three people. That's Michelle Knocked in, Rachel Key and Debbie Mitchell, who played an absolute blinder last week over the weekend. And today, in pulling together all the last minute challenges that come up with an event like this, they were absolutely fantastic. And they deserve particular special mention the side of the rest of the organizing committee. So, Michelle, Rachel and Debbie, thank you very, very much. Okay, I'm going to stop there. I'm going to pass over to my co chair. Um, so you know, Fitzgerald, Doctor and Fitzgerald from University of Galway as of last week, who's chair of the all Island M s research network and can tell you a little bit about that network. Thank you very much. Thank you. Lovely. So welcome, everybody. Um, to the first joint, uh, symposium here. Delighted to be here. So the thinking is that we will alternate, you know, will be in Northern Ireland this year. Will be in the Republic next year, and we'll bounce back and forth. You know, every year as we go forward, um, you've seen the program already? Very nice. Interesting program. A mixture of quite a few senior people giving giving presentations which were really looking forward to, and they'll be introduced by the chairs. I want to mention also that, you know, we we launched this network just over a year ago, and I want to give credit to these four the first summer scholarships. So this was an idea that we had as a kind of I call it entry level funding, you know, because if you got a small amount of money a few 1000 you can you can fund students for the summer, and it can make a big difference to their career. And these are the four students that we had last last summer in our aims are in research fellowship scheme, if you like. And I want to acknowledge the students and they had and that was all remote. Um, and they were based in in four different locations, one in, um, Queens and then the other three the other side of the border. And this year hands up any of the summer students who are here. Great. We have. And we have some joining online, and I'm delighted to that they're able to participate because, of course, the timing is during their teaching. So they really should be at lectures. Maybe today I'm not sure. Is it next next week. Um, so these are new students, and we will be sharing more details about the project that you you've been working on for the summer through through our website and due course. Okay, so those are the students, but everybody has heard of these three individuals there. Uh, Ingrid isn't with us anymore, But we have to acknowledge the the fantastic work that Stanley Hawkins and Michael Hutchinson, uh, you know, that that really built this very deep and firm foundation in in Northern Ireland, Um, related particularly to clinical research in M s and what we're doing with the R N and the N I names are en is trying to bring together all of the different disciplines. Um, so this is the network. This is the website. We spent a year working on this, a core group. Um, and these are the the founding members who are here here in the audience today. And I just wanted to put up the slide to emphasize that it's a mixture of disciplines that we have here. We have nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, people with m s, advocates for M s and then, uh, neurologists, of course. Uh, physiologists, and then the rest are the scientists. So it's we we feel that it's a very important step for us now. We're only, what, 18 months old. But names has been there for about what, five years names are. Would that be right? Yeah. So these slides were just here to introduce you to two games are in. And we hope that, you know, we're gonna be working more closely with names are into the future. Um, so we're delighted. So this is the, You know, I just tasted this from our membership Listening. That's on the website. Um, so with that, I'm going to hand over to memory to introduce our first speaker.