 As 2023 is coming to an end, I would like to follow tradition and take this final moment of the year to extend my gratitude and heartfelt thanks to all the great people at Dandrite and around. 2023 has been a very special year. In March, we celebrated our 10th anniversary and remarked this occasion with a festive reception attended by the great participant and supporters of Dandrite, including the Lundbeck Foundation and the University Leadership and Support Units. Over these first 10 years, Dandrite has established itself as a crucial and significant hub for neuroscience research in both Denmark and abroad. We attract great new people and ideas to Danish Neuroscience and we link to a growing network of neuroscience and translation all around the world. The impact of our research is reflected not only in the growing number of publications, but also in a broader outreach of our activities, and 2023 certainly showed many examples of this. Dandrite published many key publications in 2023 that emerged from the research programs of our group leaders and team leaders, and most of them in fact from collaborative efforts within Dandrite and OHS and internationally. Exciting patent applications were also submitted, for example on stem cell developments into pure neurons and opening many great new perspectives in regenerative medicine. In October, an impressive and largest ever 3D mapping of the human brain at the cell type level was published, providing a comprehensive brain cell atlas at the transcriptional, epigenetic and functional levels. Among the 250 contributors was also Marco Caponius and Yesen Cernsens groups. Marco's blueprint of the research was marked by a beautiful commemoration in November, one year after his passing. Many grants were obtained that enable career transitions, consolidation of programs and many exciting new research directions to be taken, and this for both PhD students, postdocs, junior group leaders and established researchers. The Pro Memo Center of Excellence was also extended for the full 10 year program and continues to frame research into memory. As an international research center, we also engage in many close interactions with colleagues from abroad. We welcome many accomplished researchers to deliver open, exciting lectures in OHS. Among many distinguished speakers were for example Volker Hauke, who is also now a new member of our advisory board. Nobel Laureate Joachim Frank visited at Midsummer and gave a brilliant Nobel lecture on cryoelectron microscopy, co-hosted by the Royal Danish Academy for Science and Lessons. In September we hosted Professor Takashi Emi from Tokyo University and in November Dr Jerry Chen from Boston University. All our visitors take keynote of the excellent opportunities in OHS to grow new research in neuroscience and life science in general. We also headed out, and this year for example a delegation from Dandrite visited our collaborators at the Brain Research Institute in Japan, providing a marvelous experience of their fantastic science and great hospitality. Locally our integration also continues to evolve. This year for example we launched a joint fellowship program with the OHS Institute for Advanced Studies, which allows our new group leaders to engage in this great community and meet an academic home of international scholars across all disciplines at OHS University. The doors at Dandrite are always open for new collaborations, visits and ideas. This is also very clear from many new exciting new initiatives from support from our support and communications team, which constantly try new ways of enabling research, developing a supportive community and testing exciting new ways of outreach. Our collaboration with the Nordic EMBL partnership also had a milestone this year and together with our colleagues in Norway, Sweden, Finland and at EMBL we reaffirmed our partnership for another 10 years at a great event in Helsinki. Our newest initiative is the NORPOD postdoc program, inspired by the great experiences of the EMBL iPod program. NORPOD is supported by NORFORSK and will support joint postdoc projects between our partnership nodes and address significant research gaps in molecular medicine, such as in precision neuro-medicine. 2023 is also a year of change. Dandrite is currently undergoing an exciting transition. Our first cohort of group leaders is gradually stepping into new research roles outside of the Dandrite group leader program. It is exciting to follow their development and stay in contact, such as also for future collaborations. Thanks to the very significant work, Dandrite now has a legacy and we recruit great new people. The new generation of group leaders now redefine and change the paths of the Dandrite community. In March we welcome Thomas Kim from Johns Hopkins and Jao Sun from the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Brightport to join with Tauro Kitasawa. Next month in January we will be joined also by Anna Klavon, coming from our position at the University of Copenhagen. We expect also to welcome a fifth and final group leader of the current Dandrite group leader program in 2024. The future is definitely bright for great new neuroscience at Dandrite. The winds of change also go to the Dandrite leadership. We started the year by welcoming Jelena Radulovic in the senior management and but by the end of the year I'll be stepping out of the senior management. This year's greetings are therefore very special for me and it marks my last as the Director of Dandrite. From January I'll be the Vice Dean for Research at the Faculty of Sciences. I have gained fantastic experiences with Dandrite and all the great people around me, both at the University and in Denmark and with the Nordic EMBL partnership and many great people at the advisory board and connections all across the globe. I would like to use this opportunity to thank you all for trusting in me as the Director. I'm tremendously grateful. I'll continue my ties to Dandrite as an affiliated researcher. Paul Henning Jensen steps in as the interim Director until a new Director has been identified. To represent the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics in the Dandrite management, Manus Kergo steps in to the senior management with great excitement and commitment to his new role at Dandrite. As always we see the world changing but certainly the changes at Dandrite are positive and go well and forward in our direction. On a larger perspective artificial intelligence for example challenges our view of the human mind and climate changes and global conflicts continue to threaten humanity and the world of free spirits and opportunities. Knowledge, collaborations and cross-disciplinary thinking is the way forward. Dandrite will certainly strive to add positive steps to those big questions and we happily engage. So with a very light mind in all the dark times I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year ahead.