Report PopGroup meeting
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Report PopGroup Meeting by Iris Fischer
The meeting
The PopGroup Meeting is an informal meeting for people working in the fields of Population Genetics and Evolutionary Biology. It takes place every year in the UK somewhen around Christmas. This year, the conference took place from the 17th – 20th of December at the University of Warwick in Coventry. It was funded by Eppendorf (and others). Approximately 150 people came to the meeting this year, mostly from the UK, but also from Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, France, Russia, Australia and the US.
Every morning, there was a Plenary Talk first followed by three parallel sessions until five o’clock every evening. On Tuesday the 18th, there was a poster session after the talks where I presented my poster. On Wednesday the 19th, a big conference dinner took place.
My poster
For the meeting I developed a poster summarizing the results of my Diplomarbeit (master thesis) with the title “Population Genetics of Adaptation to Drought in Wild Tomatoes”. For two hours, people had time to ask me questions about the poster (and my thesis). First, I was afraid that no one would care about my results, because I was the only one at the meeting working with tomatoes. But there were many people interested and I really had to explain my results for the whole two hours. Everybody was very nice and surprised how much data I gathered in that little time. I also got some suggestions what I could do next.
Informal atmosphere
In general, the meeting was very informal. Since all scientist spent breakfast, lunch, dinner and coffee breaks together, it was possible to meet many interesting people. The most positive thing about the conference was the very nice and almost familial atmosphere. It was very easy to strike up a conversation. The most negative thing was the accommodation, which wasn’t very comfortable. The most important thing I have learnt: “Important” people do not necessarily give good talks.
I enjoyed the conference very much and I really would like to visit the next PopGroup Meeting, too!
Link to the meetings website: http://www.popgroup.org/
