During our WMS meeting in Brugge, there were many very successful presentations as a classical phenomenon. The selection committee had real difficult time in allocating all the ever growing prizes. This year the following awards were distibuted:

• President's award for the most innovative presentation: Haiyan Zhou's paper on ''Epigenetic allele silencing unveils recessive RYR1 mutations in core myopathies''.
• Elsevier Award for best oral presentation: Nigel Clarke's paper on ''A clinical and pathological study of congenital fiber type disproportion''.
• Elsevier Award for best poster presentation: Richard Baloh's paper on ''In vitro analysis of MFN2 mutations associated with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease''.
• Jennifer Trust 21st Birthday prize on SMA: Richard Finkel's paper on '' The CHOP INTEND: A reliable motor scale for infants with neuromuscular disease''.

All prizes were 500 Euros. There were additional seven people who got an Elsevier certificate who will be entitled to an extra year's membership of WMS for 2008. This holds true for the four prize winners as well.

You can view some glimpses from the Awards and Closing Ceremony of the WMS-11 Brugge congress.

From left: Richard Finkel - May Christine Malicdan - Robert Baloh - Haiyan Zhou - Juliane Müller - Virginie Carmignac - - Valerie Allamand - Nigel Clarke - Peter van den Bergh - Victor Dubowitz

WMS-12 Taormina congress host Giuseppe Vita is receiving the traditional WMS flag originally created at the WMS-4 1999 meeting in Antalya from the WMS-11 Brugge host Peter van den Bergh.

Peter van den Bergh, Victor Dubowitz, Peter de Jonghe, Nathalie Goemans, Gunnar Buyse constituted the local organizing group.