On behalf of the local organizing committee, we warmly welcome you from September 23-26, 2018 to the 45th Computing in Cardiology Conference in Maastricht, The Netherlands.

Situated in the southernmost part of the Netherlands, Maastricht is located in the heart of Europe and the Euregion Meuse –Rhine. The city is only a short distance from both the Belgian and the German border, and cities such as Liege, Aachen, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, and Brussels are very near. Maastricht is easily accessible by plane, train, and car.

Maastricht is the oldest city in the Netherlands, but its university is the youngest and most international one, with 17 000 students from more than 120 different countries. Being the gastronomic capital of the Netherlands, the city also offers everything from Michelin-starred establishments to traditional, small local restaurants and pubs offering hospitality and quality food for every budget.

The Sunday symposium will take place at the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences of Maastricht University and the conference will be at the MECC conference centre, both located in the Randwyck area, within walking distance from your hotel, or easily reachable using the local public transportation, which will be free of charge with your CinC badge.

The organizing committee, representing the Departments of Cardiology, Biomedical Engineering, and Knowledge Engineering has prepared an active scientific and social program in and around Maastricht for Computing in Cardiology 2018. The Sunday Symposium will focus on a hands-on experience with four advanced computer models and software tools in cardiology (CircAdapt, ECGSim, Myokit, and SCIRun). After a word of welcome by the chairman of the Department of Cardiology and a short introduction, 250 computers are waiting, so you can discover the possibilities of various models to simulate, for example, cardiac contraction or electrical activation across various scales from ion-channel to whole heart.

On Monday, the conference will start in the MECC conference centre. After the morning sessions all participants are transferred to the city centre for a two-hour lunch cruise on the river. In order to keep on schedule, everybody is requested to go directly to the busses at the end of their session. After returning ashore at 15:00 the various social activities will start. Eight different activist and passivist programmes have been organized, ranging from very lazy to breath-taking. The large number on your badge indicates the choice you made during registration, so cheating is not an option.

At 19:00 all participants are expected at café Ipanema, next to the Bonnefanten museum. After a welcome drink and bite on the impressive stairs of the museum, CinC delegates have the option to participate in a short guided tour to see the highlights of the museum, or can enjoy a private stroll. From 20:15 onwards, a walking dinner will be served with various choices to accommodate everybody’s taste and the bars will be opened. During the evening the Beverly Brothers will play their oldies but goodies.

On Tuesday, the conference will continue at the MECC conference centre. After the afternoon sessions, CinC delegates are invited by the mayor of Maastricht, Annemarie Penn- te Strake, to attend a reception at the Maastricht town hall. During the evening you are free to enjoy Maastricht nightlife with its 400 bars and restaurants.

On Wednesday, the final day of the conference, the program at the MECC will bring more exciting scientific presentations and will conclude with the final plenary session. In this session the winners of the Young Investigator Award, the Physionet/CinC Challenge Awards, the ESC-CinC Clinical Needs Translational Award, The Mortara Fellowships and the Bill & Gary Sanders Poster Awards will be announced, together with a preview on CinC2019 in Singapore.

We are confident that on Wednesday evening we will look back on a successful and social CinC2018 that hopefully brought you at least as much inspiration and satisfaction as it gave us preparing the programme.