And thus it came to the end. Project RUTTER officially ended on 31 August 2025, after six years of intense work. Just a few brief words on this occasion:

First of all, we should be proud of what was achieved. The RUTTER team exceeded — by far — the scientific outputs it had promised to accomplish. By any metric — be it books, or papers, or communications, meetings and workshops, graduate training, outreach activities, presence in the media, etc — the RUTTER Project delivered a really impressive amount of work, much more than it had initially promised. A more detailed analysis shows that the production per researcher or per Euro was truly exceptional, way above average.

Much more important, however, were the intellectual results and the historical progress that was accomplished. This is not the place to summarize these results, but we can confidently say that we are now in a much better position than we were six years ago in understanding the questions that RUTTER addressed. It will take some time for RUTTER’s contributions to percolate in the academic world, but I have no doubt that their impact will be progressively felt.

But what was most important during the RUTTER’s six years were the people. The RUTTER team — researchers, PhD students, project coordinator, IT personnel, trainees, etc — excelled at every level, both academic and personal. I have only admiration and words of praise for each of them. They were the most enthusiastic, talented, original and funny group of researchers I ever worked with. Many thanks to all! — It was a unique privilege to lead such an exceptional group of people.