London to Amsterdam: Travelling sustainably to the ECNP 2025 conference

Having spent 2.5 years collecting data alongside my amazing team at the Centre for Neuroimaging Sciences, there was something incredibly fulfilling about being able to share the outcomes and insights from our work investigating cognitive deficits in patients with schizophrenia and major depressive disorder. We presented the findings as a conference poster at the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) 2025 conference in Amsterdam.

Due to the generosity of the IGUANA initiative, a sizable group of us from the neuroimaging department were able to all travel from London to the Netherlands together. Starting our journey at St Pancras, we were able to take a singular Eurostar train all the way to Amsterdam via Lille and Belgium. The journey itself was incredibly easy and comfy, taking us from the heart of London all the way to central Amsterdam in just over 4 hours. Admittedly, whilst a longer journey than flying, there was something very serene in being able to watch the vistas outside the window transition as we passed through a variety of European landscapes. Likewise, being able to settle into a chair with more leg room than a flight, as well as a table, provided opportunities for a little bit of work, conversations, catching up on sleep (crucial to a PhD), and a particularly enthusiastic game of Yahtzee that made the whole journey a very enjoyable experience.

A notable advantage of being able to take the Eurostar to Amsterdam from London, outside of the sizable carbon savings compared to flying, was that from the main station, it was only a short walk away to the hotel, rather than necessitating the usual transport transfers to the centre that are often inevitable when flying to European cities.

The ECNP conference itself was a thoroughly interesting and exciting experience. The plethora of presentations, symposiums, campfire sessions and industry talks on offer was fantastic and has given me greater clarity and passion for the place that my own PhD research fits into the wider international scientific community. Notably, one of the highlights of the trip – and the predominant reason for travelling - was being able to present my PhD research investigating latent transdiagnostic and intra-diagnosis cognitive profiles in participants with schizophrenia, major depressive disorder and healthy controls. My research poster attempted to highlight that latent profiling approaches may provide insights into identifying discrete patterns of cognition within and across psychiatric disorders that are lost or overlooked when using simple population comparisons, and it was a privilege (and a lot of fun) to be able to have insightful discussions on this topic that I am so passionate about.

Of course, a further benefit was being able to explore Amsterdam outside of the conference, and having never previously visited, I thoroughly enjoyed being able to sightsee around the city. Particular favourites of mine, having previously undertaken an Art foundation before my psychology and neuroscience education, were visiting the many famous works on offer at the Rijksmuseum (and even finding time to draw here) and the Van Gogh museum.

The journey back to London was a similarly easy, social, and comfortable journey on the Eurostar. Given the happy exhaustion resultant from the jam-packed conference timetable and discovering Amsterdam, it was very appreciated to have a spacious seat from which to nap and debrief on the conference highlights with the other members of the department. The convenience of arriving back in Central London late at night, rather than finding a way home from an out-of-city airport, was a perfect end to the trip. Despite travelling at a slower pace, it was nice to know that we were using more environmentally sustainable means.

Moving forward, this experience has cemented my commitment to choosing sustainable travel options wherever feasible, and I am incredibly grateful to the KCL IGUANA initiative for all of their support in making this experience and travel possible.