Upcoming events

This course is about one of the greatest challenges of our time: climate change. What are the latest insights of the science of economics into its causes and potential solutions? How large are the costs of climate change? Should we tax carbon, cap-and-trade emission rights, or subsidize solar and wind power? Why is it so difficult to stick to environmental agreements such as ‘Paris’, despite the evident benefits to all? How can we prevent our industry from moving abroad if we take a leading role and ‘go it alone’ in taking environmental action? What is the role of economic growth and development? Should we stop it to avert a climate catastrophe and biodiversity loss, or can we pin our hopes on green growth?

In this summer school, an attractive programme is provided in which experts in the field will highlight different aspects of environmental signaling in plants. Additional speakers will be selected from submitted abstracts. Moreover, there will be ample opportunity for discussions during lunch and the poster viewing sessions. The meeting is especially attractive for PhD students, but the programme will definitely also be of interest to post-docs and senior scientists.

Candidates who are seriously considering applying in the coming vidi round (pre proposal deadline 5 November 2024) and who want to prepare themselves can follow a vidi grant course, given by Yellow Research. The next course will be given on September 10th 2024, from 9.30 till 4, in Wageningen.

Sustainable food production is a major challenge. Can insects feature in sustainable feed production to support the growing world population without transgressing the planetary boundaries? That is the central question during this interdisciplinary symposium on the 12th of September 2024!

We are very excited to announce the first edition of the Grounding carbon farming course which will take place from 14-20 September on site on a dairy farm in France. This is an all-included, immersive course where fundamental issues around carbon sequestration in agricultural lands are treated from different perspectives, including that of farmers. Highly relevant to anyone working from close or far with soil carbon and land-based climate change mitigation, from biological, environmental, social, or economic perspectives!

The Netherlands Society for Evolutionary Biology (NLSEB) Junior Board hosts a series of events at various Dutch institutions, which aim to inform participants of the diversity of exciting evolution-based research in the Netherlands.

EPS theme 3 combines two fields of plant biology that are intimately connected, Metabolism and Adaptation. Metabolism underlies the functioning of plants, ranging from the fundamental primary processes of photosynthesis and respiration to the synthesis of, sometimes species-specific, secondary metabolites that are responsible for an enormous diversity in traits in the plant kingdom. During the theme 3 symposia two invited keynote speakers and junior researchers of the EPS community present their research and give you insight into the metabolism and adaption of plants. Afterwards you are more than welcome to join for drinks to discuss research, set up collaborations and meet-up your peers.

EPS theme 4 encompasses several disciplines ranging from genetics, to epigenetics, genomics, bioinformatics, biosystematics and plant breeding. Given the broad scope and the important role of genome data throughout all of plant biology, theme 4 is intimately connected with other themes. This year we invited Wilma van Esse (WUR) and Marja Timmermans (University of Tübingen) as Keynote speakers. Interested to join? Register and we will see each other in October.

On this day, we will explore the latest research and insights into the different aspects of the broad field of soil sciences covering topics from soil fauna, over to soil physics and soil management. Current challenges and solutions are presented and discussed.

Plants dynamically interact with a wide range of organisms, some of these are harmful while others are beneficial for the plant. These interactions are not only interesting objects for study, but they are also highly relevant as plant pathogens and pests destroy nearly 35% of the world’s annual crop harvest. During the theme 2 symposia two keynote speakers and junior researchers of the EPS community present their research on wild and cultivated accessions of economically important crops, such as potato, tomato, barley, tobacco and Brassicaceae, next to model species such as clover and Arabidopsis thaliana.

Future generations face unprecedented challenges; climate change, resource depletion, socio-economic and health inequalities. To address these challenges researchers will need to push us outside their disciplinary comfort zones to think differently about problems and possibly solutions. In other words, researchers have to work together in inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations. This new way of working requires a different skill set than those taught in disciplinary courses. Therefore, in this training participants will learn and experience the different phases of these complex collaborations. The course is designed for participants to go through the different phases of these complex collaborations: disciplinary grounding, perspective taking, finding common ground and integration. We combine both theory and practise to train collaborative skills.

he course will include a general introduction to the MoBPS framework and breeding programs, as well as a series of exercises on how to use MoBPSweb (www.mobps.de) and the MoBPS R-package. In addition, there will be room for open discussion and specific questions regarding own breeding programs. After completion of the course, participants should be able to simulate common breeding programs in both plant and animal breeding.

Within the framework of the EU project RUMIGEN (https://www.rumigen.eu/), we offer a 5-day course on “Genetics of resilience and trade-offs” with hands-on training, at Wageningen Campus. The course will review state-of-the-art theory and application of the concepts of resilience, robustness and trade-offs, with a focus on their implementation in breeding programs. Experts in animal breeding and systemic modelling and guest speakers will teach the latest theory and examples related to the concepts of resilience, robustness and trade-offs. Implementation of related traits in breeding programs and important challenges faced in these processes, will be discussed based on real use cases.

After successful symposia in Brisbane (Australia, 2022) and Gainesville (USA, 2023), we are organizing the third symposium to offer a worldwide podium for presentations and discussions around modelling and prediction of GxExM data and interactions. A symposium to share understanding and approaches to predict cropperformance, accounting for Genotype by Environment by Management(GxExM) Interactions

The concept of the flatfish symposia was initiated at the 1989 European Marine Biology Symposium in Oban, Scotland. A group of young scientists supported by Ray Beverton set up an international forum to discuss and exchange their ideas and results on fish ecology with respect to their research on flatfishes.

As a future scientist in the life sciences, it is important that PhD students have an insight into the debates around the relationship between human beings, animals, and nature, to understand their meaning and to learn to participate in these debates. This course will provide students with a systematic overview of the key topics of animal and environmental ethics. NOTE: For the online version of the course, priority will be given to participants that are not based on the Wageningen campus. If you are based in Wageningen, we strongly advise you to apply for the in-person version of the course.

How do I write an appealing news article? How do I get my research in the spotlights? How do I tell a broader audience than my own peer group about my work? And how do I deal with possible discussions that may arise from my research? These, and other important questions about animal science and society will be addressed during the training course ‘Societal Impact of your research’. The course is meant for PhD candidates and postdocs who want to get tips and tricks for communicating their research to non-colleagues including journalists, companies, farmers, policymakers, politicians, NGOs or students.

Together with colleagues from Plant Science Group (PSG), Agrotechnology and Food Science Group (AFSG), Environmental Science Group (ESG), and the Jan IngenHousz Institute (JII) we established a seminar and discussion group on photosynthesis: Sharing Knowledge in Photosynthesis Research (SKiPR). In this group we share knowledge on all things photosynthesis and stimulate collaborations and expand our research networks (and have some mild fun if possible, too). The group is aimed at researchers working on all forms of - or related to - photosynthesis research, from MSc student to professor, as well as those working in the applied research.