The Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience core held its first annual retreat together with the SFB 1280/ International Graduate School of Neuroscience (IGSN) Congress on Extinction Learning: The Neural, Behavioural, Ontogenetic, Educational, and Clinical Mechanisms. The event was hosted by the Ruhr University Bochum, and keynote speakers included Neil Harrison (Sussex, UK), Ulrike Weber (Zurich, CH), Arthur Lietz (Ludwig-Maximilians-University, DE), Marie Monfils (Texas at Austin, US), Tor Wagner (Colorado, US), Jamila Andoh (Heidelberg, DE), Allison Waters (Griffith University, AU), Christian Büchel (Hamburg-Eppendorf, DE), Paul Pauli (Julius-Maximilians-University, DE), Renée M Visser (Cambridge, UK), Ingrid Ehrlich (Tubingen, DE), and Ann Meulders (KU Leuven, BE).

The science-dedicated Deutsches Museum Bonn was the location of the Ischemia, Reperfusion and Angiogenesis core's annual retreat this year. This officially marked a new era for the core which in the past traditionally held its retreats in conjunction with the annual Xanten Workshops on Cell and Tissue Damage: Mechanisms, Protection and Therapy which were established by the core's founder, the late Prof. Dr. Dr. Herbert de Groot (1950 - 2016).

BIOME hosted its triple-core (Immunology, Infectious Diseases, and Tumour and Signalling) retreat in Cologne just before the official opening of "5th season" in the carnival capital. The successful event was prepared with great attention to detail by the team of Tanja Becker,  Ekaterina Homp, Artur Kibler, Jennifer Steens and Annika Weiss. Guest speakers invited to share insights into their research and career development were Benedikt Kaufer (FU Berlin), Christoph Plass (DKFZ Heidelberg) and Jacques Neefjes (Leiden). The lecture prize was awarded to Simon Merz by democratic vote , while the scientific jury granted poster prizes to Corinna Keup, Helene Sertznig and Karolin Wieber.

Making up for not having held a retreat last year, the Ischemia, Reperfusion and Angiogenesis core had a second local meeting at the end of November this year which ended with a cheerful, ice-breaking group trip to the Christmas Market in Essen.​​

Miriam Böhn, Verena Höfer, Jana Jungkurth and Camilla Wilk hosted the Genetics and Cell Biology 2018 retreat on the peaceful shores of Munster's Lake Aa, inviting the locally-based scientists, Erich Bornberg-Bauer and Erez Raz, as keynote speakers. The core's prize for the best presentation went to Pascal Lambertz while the poster award went to Lisa Kirchhoff, with Julia Menges and Ronja Schirmann as the respective runners-up in each category. The principal investigators were particularly impressed by the high level of the doctoral presentations, and the active peer feedback within the group was inspiring.

At the Medical Faculty's 2018 Research Day, four BIOME/RTG members, Theresa Kühnel, Alexander Ross, Daniel Soub and Yuqing Wu were invited to contest in the 2^nd Science Slam, and the title was won by Alexander Ross for his Caribbean island metaphor, "Viva la Opsonización". BIOME's congratulations also go to Mira Alt, Tanja Becker, Denisa Bojkova, Lana Inoue, Karlotta Kahmann, Samantha Langer, Jana Meiners, Julia Menges, Luca Salhöfer, Annika Stokvis, Beatrice Their, Julia Volke and Rebekka Vogtmann for winning poster prizes.