Lots of work went into this new DynaMORE article by Sophie Bögemann et al. (2023)! The longitudinal study about the association between psychological resilience factors (RFs) with stressor reactivity (SR) during the COVID-19 outbreak in Europe confirmed the importance of positive appraisal (PA) in resilience and identified other RFs that prospectively predict stress resilience. Read in to find out more!

The 9th International Symposium on Resilience Research (#resilience2023) has left us all with memorable impressions, lots of new scientific ideas, and the joy of sunshine in Germany in late September! The symposium took place from 27-29 September 2023 in Mainz and covered the latest developments and breakthroughs within the field of stress resilience. Highlights were, again, outstanding talks and speakers, an interesting poster session, and our very own DynaMORE member Sophie Bögemann winning a poster award. So well deserved!

In this ARTE video “Resilience – what strengthens the soul?”, LIR scientists get to the bottom of current questions about stress and resilience. Find out more about our DynaMORE project from interviewee Prof. Kalisch and the BEWARE project by Prof. Wessa, and let Prof. Müller explain to you what we humans can learn from resilient mice. The video is available until 14 December 2023.

From 3-7 July 2023, participants from 19 different countries and 5 different continents came together in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, for a summer school entitled “Stress & Cognition: From Basic Mechanisms to Psychopathology”. The 5-day event was hosted by Radboud University and Radboud University Medical Center and co-organized by DynaMORE.

Kölle Alaaf – The 6th DynaMORE General Assembly (GA) Meeting in scenic Cologne, Germany, from 29-31 March 2023 was a great success, with nearly 30 delegates discussing scientific progress and reaching important decisions. We also welcomed a few new faces to the team, including a new project manager. Many thanks to Dr. Sara Stöber for five years of spot-on management and welcome, Sonja Leissner (also from concentris), who will lead the project to the finish line together with our scientific coordinator, Prof. Raffael Kalisch (LIR).

The latest Steering Committee meeting was very successfully completed on 4th October 2022 via Zoom. The meeting was once again filled with fruitful discussions as well as updates on all Work Packages. We look forward to meeting in person again during the General Assembly meeting taking place in spring next year (location to be decided).

Our 8th newsletter is out! Check it out to find out all the necessary information about #resilience2022 in Mainz, the 8th International Symposium on resilience Research, featuring an impressive line-up of speakers, a poster award, and a free workshop on measuring stress in real life.

The first face-to-face meeting after 2 years of the pandemic, took part from 6-8 April 2022 in Palma de Mallorca. It was a full success: Besides lots of fruitful discussions and catching up on the enormous progress made in all work packages, we mainly enjoyed and scientifically benefited from finally meeting in person again! What a beautiful location.

How has the Covid-19 pandemic affected our mental health? Moreover, are we able to bounce back from this? Answers to these questions come, at least in part, from the DynaMORE project. Read the full interview with various resilience researchers, including our scientific coordinator Prof. Raffael Kalisch, in the European Science-Media Hub.

The project’s 7th newsletter is out: Have a look and learn more about DynaMORE’s progress, awards team members received, new publications, upcoming events, a new SEAB member, and more!

Dr. Sarah Ayash is a postdoc at Leibniz Institute for Resilience Research (LIR) and investigates stress resilience. In part nine of our blog interview series, she explains how we can positively influence our own resilience. The interview also features the DynaMORE publication “Psycho-social factors associated with mental resilience in the Corona lockdown” (Veer et al. 2021).

The project’s 6th newsletter is out: Have a look and learn more about DynaMORE’s progress, awards team members received, new publications & videos, upcoming events, and recent press coverage!

For the large international DynaM-OBS and DynaM-INT studies, the participants’ brain activity is first scanned in the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner while performing various cognitive tasks. Study sites for these MRI scans are Berlin, Mainz, Warsaw, Nijmegen, and Tel Aviv. What happens in the MRI scanner? Which tasks are people subjected to, and why? How many people are participating? And what’s the procedure when coming in to do the scan? In this video, Dr. Ilya Veer, Dr. Carolin Wackerhagen, PhD student Antje Riepenhausen, and Master student Begüm Topaloglu are answering these questions!

Is resilience a given trait or an acquirable skill? How are the study subjects selected? What parameters are measured, and what if someone develops a mental disorder during the study? Prof. Henrik Walter from the Charité in Berlin answers these and many more questions about the two large studies of the project, DynaM-OBS and DynaM-INT, in this interview.

Together with postdoctoral researcher Dr. Judith van Leeuwen, Dr. Erno Hermans from the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behavior in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, demonstrates and explains the functionality and daily use of the wearable mHealth devices in this video (a smartwatch, developed by IMEC, coupled with a smartphone).

Read about the start of our big multi-center study DynaM-OBS that just began in Berlin, Mainz, Nijmegen, Warsaw, and Tel Aviv, new website features and videos, a handful of new publications, and recent media coverage!

The aim of DynaM-OBS is to develop an in silico model of stress resilience, which can serve as a base for predicting resilience and mental health. Based on this study, we will create interventions that help people cope with difficult life situations. These will be developed and tested in our future study DynaM-INT. If you are interested to support our DynaM-OBS study as a participant and live in Berlin, Mainz, Nijmegen, Tel Aviv, or Warsaw, please click here!

In this video, Prof. Dr. Birgit Kleim, Prof. Dr. Inez Germeys, and PhD student Marta Marciniak explain the meaning and use of ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) and ecological momentary interventions (EMIs) in psychology and in the DynaMORE project.

In this new video, Prof. Dr. Jens Timmer and Prof. Dr. Harald Binder, both experts on mathematical modelling and applying such models to real-world scenarios, explain the idea and methodology behind modelling stressor load and stress resilience for the DynaMORE project.

If you would like to receive relevant information on events in resilience research, including our yearly International Symposium on Resilience Research, workshops, and updates on major projects, subscribe here to our mailing list. New feature: the resilience job market. Send us your openings and we will pass them on to the resilience research community!

Try out ReApp, our new mobile intervention based on positive reappraisal! It’s a fast one-week resilience training program for our DynaMINT study. Watch the video clip below for more information. Interested? Contact us: reappstudy@gmail.com

Learn about the project’s progress during Corona times, our achievements, new team members, upcoming events, and our most recent publications!

The first results of how people are coping with the Corona crisis are in! Potential resilience factors, exposure to Corona-specific and general stressors, as well as internalizing symptoms were assessed online in 5000 adult Europeans: In comparison with other resilience factors, positive appraisal specifically of the consequences of the Corona crisis was the single strongest resilience factor. Positive appraisal style (PAS) was not only positively associated with resilience (p<0.001) but also mediated the positive association between perceived social support (PSS) and resilience (p<0.001). Resilience, as an outcome, was conceptualized as good mental health despite stressor exposure. Therefore, PAS and PSS can be seen as important modifiable protective factors that can be targeted by public mental health efforts in similar crisis situations in the future.

The corona crisis as a chance to strengthen your own resilience & to participate in resilience research: If you are 18 or older you can participate in our COVID-19 mental health study! If you like it, please also tell your friends, colleagues, and social network about it. Please select your language in the table below for more information. We highly appreciate your help. Let’s aim to spread this survey study faster than the virus & thank you for advancing our knowledge about human resilience in times of crisis!
– The DynaMORE team

The Leibnitz Institute for Resilience Research in Mainz, Germany, is providing 10 tips on how to stay mentally healthy during the corona pandemic. Several languages are available!

Read about the project’s progress, achievements, open positions, upcoming events, our most recent publications, the new project video that is now available on YouTube, and a tasty Christmas cookie recipe!

Click below for details regarding an exciting new PhD position on the DynaMORE project at the Charité in Berlin from 1 April 2020 on! Note: The position requires German language skills at level C1.

The first introductory DynaMORE video just went public! Watch, like, and share it. Over the next months, more video clips will be published, covering DynaMORE’s key goals, its technical and conceptual challenges, information for study participants, and the project’s real-life impact and value. Stay tuned!

Click here to access the online version of our most recent newsletter, and feel free to subscribe to our mailing list. The project newsletter appears twice per year and is a worthwhile read for anyone who is interested in stress resilience and resilience research. This time, we are summarizing major advancements within DynaMORE, introducing a lot of new team members, postdocs, PhD students, and collaborators, and present our latest publication and info brochure.

The 2nd DynaMORE General Assembly (GA) Meeting took place in Germany’s capital, Berlin. It was great to welcome new PhD students and Postdocs who recently joined the project, to receive demonstrations of the mHealth device and planned interventions, and to see brand-new data from all work packages!

Click on the image below to access the web version of the project’s info folder and to download it! The print version is ready as well and has been sent in packs of 50-250 to all team leaders.

Prof. Dr. Lilly Shanahan & colleagues recently launched a new page of the Jacobs Center for Productive Youth Development on Facebook. Check out their recent posts, share and like!

A PhD position in the DynaMORE Horizon 2020 project is open at the Kalisch-Lab! Take this opportunity to work with leading empirical and modelling experts, following a unique multidimensional and longitudinal approach to prevent stress-related mental disorders and to boost natural resilience. Contact the Kalisch-Lab now!

Radboud University Medical Center invites applications for a PhD project in the field of cognitive / affective neuroscience. The project is embedded in the Cognitive Affective Neuroscience Laboratory (PI: Erno Hermans) at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour in Nijmegen (the Netherlands).

Welcome to the first edition of our half-yearly project newsletter! Check out what has happened since the project started, find out who we are and who are the leading brains behind the project, and read about past and upcoming events and the latest news in resilience research in genera. We’d be very happy to win you as a subscriber in our newsletter mailing list.

The 2nd PhD and Postdoc Retreat in the rural, sunny landscape of Hirschegg, Austria, from 17-20 September 2018 was a great success. A total of 36 attendees discussed stress resilience and facilitated networking within the CRC 1193.

The 1st International Spring School of Resilience Research was conducted at Kloster Seeon (an abbey near Munich) from 21-25 May 2018, allowing young scientists from all over the world to network.

The project’s 1st press release  is now online: Prof. Dr. Raffael Kalisch describes how personalized computer models may help measure and enhance psychological resilience in the near future.

Experts from Emory University (Atlanta, USA), Tilburg University (Netherlands), University of Bern (Switzerland) and University of Bonn (Germany) serve on the Scientific and Ethical Advisory Board (SEAB) for continuous ethical advice and quality control.