1st Dubrovnik International Conference 

on Multiple Sclerosis

May 9-12, 2001

Dubrovnik, Croatia

This conference brought MS researchers from Europe and the US together for four days to discuss and share ideas on the etiology and treatment of MS. Here are some pictures of the attendees at the conference.  You can also see that Dubrovnik has been repaired after the war and life is back to normal.  Croatia is a great place to visit; good food and wines, beautiful scenes and friendly people.  All pictures are thumbnails; click on them to expand.

This is Dubrovnik, the pearl of the Adriatic and the site of our conference.

Here is a second picture of the city, showing more clearly a portion of the city wall.  You can see the island of Lokrum in the background.

Here is the Placa, a thousand year old street which is paved in white marble as is the entire old town.

Here is Dr. Pugliatti from the University of Sassari in Italy.  She is a neurologist from Sardinia.  We are in an arboretum on the Adriatic coast which has flowers and plants from across the world.

The village of Ston has the second longest wall in all of Europe, surpassed only by Hadrian's Wall.  The wall is 5 kilometers (about 3 miles) long and it snakes over and around the mountain which stands as a backdrop to Stone. Several hardy (or is it foolhardy?) souls climbed up the steep walls to the top.  This view taken from only about a third of the way to the top looking down shows Drs. Pugliatti, Lassman, Miltenburger, Joanne, myself, Rebecca, Boiko, and Lassman.

Here you see some of the invited speakers enjoying a banquet of fresh seafood at Ston.   The food,  view and company were outstanding and memorable.  Starting from the near left side of the table you can see Professor Ian McDonald of Queens Square Hospital in London, Harveian Librarian at the Royal College of Physicians; second is Professor David Miller, Director of the NMR unit as well as Professor of Clinical Neurology at the University of London and the Editor of the Journal of Neurology; myself, Joanne and Rebecca; finally, Dr. Maura Pugliatti, a neurologist from the University of Sassari and an expert on the epidemiology of MS world-wide is the last person on the left.  Sitting at the 'head' of the table and facing the camera is Professor Alexai Boiko, Chair of Neurology and Neurosurgery of the Russian Medical University in Moscow.  Starting on the far right  is Professor Folker Hanefeld, Professor and Director of the Department of Pediatrics and Child Neurology at Georg-August University in Goettingen; then comes Dr. Carolan Miltenburger, head of Outcomes Research at Schering AG; then Professor Charles Poser,  Senior Neurologist at Beth Israel Deaconness Medical Center and Visiting Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical and conference organizer with Dr. Brinar; next is Professor Vesna Brinar, conference organizer with Dr. Poser, Head of the Division of Autonomic Nervous System Disorders, Vertigo and Ataxias well as Chair of the Department of Neurology at University Hospital Medical Center, Zagreb; next is Professor Hans Lassman, Director of the Brain Research Institute and the Department of Neuroimmunology at the University of Vienna and closest to the camera is Dr Jutta Lassman, a clinical neurologist.

Beautiful theories and beautiful data deserve a beautiful setting.