About the Society

The European Society for Microcirculation was founded in Hamburg in 1960 following a first meeting of interested scientists in Lund, Sweden in 1959, and now has 500-600 regular members. The aims of the Society are to advance understanding of the microcirculation by bringing together clinicians and scientists from a wide range of specialists, but including physiology, vascular biology, genetics and biophysics.

It is now widely recognized that involvement of the small blood vessels is fundamental to numerous disease processes including the spread of cancer, delayed healing, circulatory shock and the complications of diabetes. Such conditions affect people of all ages and result in considerable disability and premature death. New preventative measures and treatments are likely to rely on a more thorough understanding of how the small blood vesses fail in such conditions. By combining the efforts of both basic and clinical scientists, the Society is well poised to make significant contributions towards achieving such goals.

The Society has held 25 conferences to date. The next one, the 26th, is scheduled for the year 2011 in Munich. Such meetings attract about 750 scientists and clinicians from around the world. The Society has members in over 25 countries and 8 European countries are represented on the Executive Committee.

Specific goals of the Society are to encourage and help young scientists to join this exciting and important field through Travel Awards to attend its meetings, as well as Career Development Awards to allow them to visit other institutions and learn new techniques. In addition, the Society encourages the development of microvascular science in other European countries and in particular the former Eastern bloc.

Since 1980, the Society has its own journal, the Journal of Vascular Research, an international publication of growing impact, through which the world wide scientific community is informed of the Society's endeavours.