Successful applications 2011

Ana writes: "I used the travel grant that I got from the EES to go to the annual Evolution meeting in Norman Oklahoma from the 17-22 of June 2011. The meeting had eight parallel sessions where talks were held about different interesting evolutionary biology topics like: genetics of morphology, molecular evolution, genomics and population genetics to mention some examples. I presented a talk in the session of molecular population genetics with the title “Sequence and expression divergence of the foraging gene between African and European populations of Drosophila melanogaster”. Presenting my PhD project as a talk was an exiting experience especially because one begins to gain experience in giving talks in such a big conference. I also enjoyed listening at the talks of scientist from whom I know their work like Jerry Coyne who works on speciation in Drosophila, Hopi Hoekstra who studies morphological and molecular adaptation in mice or also the talk given by Peter Adolfatto who talked about selection and protein evolution in Drosophila. I had a very nice time at the Evolution meeting enjoying the ‘evolutionary biology’ environment of the meeting and also enjoying the delicious barbecues that Norman offers."

Miriam writes: "In August 2011 I had the chance to attend the ESEB meeting in Tübingen, an international conference in Evolutionary Biology. Around 1300 scientists presented and discussed their projects, circa 300 people gave oral talks and 700 posters have been presented in several poster sessions spread over the six days of meeting. I presented a poster on “Long-term balancing selection at the blood group-related gene B4galnt2 in the genus Mus (Rodentia; Muridae)”, many visitors came and inspired me with their questions, I had a lot of nice conversations. Furthermore, this meeting was very interesting for me, as I am in the end of my PhD, I am currently looking for a Post Doc position. In this meeting I had the great chance to meet and talk to leading scientists about their career, possible open positions and not to forget their intersting projects and new findings. Thank you EES for the possibility to attend this meeting!"

Quirin writes: "Thanks to the EES travel grant, I could attend the 9th International Symposium on Cladocera in Verbania, Italy. This conference was a gathering of scientists from many different fields, united by the group of organisms they work on, with an emphasis on the model organism Daphnia. The 65 talks given included plenary talks from Prof. Dr. Wilfried Lampert, former Director of the Max Planck Institute in Plön and Dr. John Colbourne, main driver of the Daphnia genome project. Together with the poster sessions I broadened my horizon and collected ideas, which might be useful for my further research. Presenting my own work in a talk was a great chance for me, gave me positive feedback and led to fruitful discussions. Additionally I got into contact with many people and with some of them I already started collaborating soon after the conference. On the whole, the Cladocera Symposium was a great experience for me and I want to thank EES for the travel grant, making all of this possible."

Lena writes: "In August 2011, I attended the 13th Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) in Tübingen. Around 1300 scientists working in the field of evolution from all over the world came together in the small town of Tübingen and made it a vivid center of evolutionary research for six days. More than 500 posters were presented at the conference and more than 300 oral presentations were held– one of them by myself. This was my first talk on such a big conference, so I felt quite lucky and excited at the same time. I presented the work of my main PhD project on population transcriptomics in Drosophila melanogaster and received various interesting questions from the audience. In addition, I had nice discussions with other scientists about my project after the talk. These provided me with new ideas for the future direction of my project. The whole conference offered many interesting talks and posters, and I had lots of inspiring conversations with presenters during the poster sessions. The conference was completed by a farewell dinner, which took place at a beautiful, old monastery and offered the chance to chat with other scientists in a very relaxed atmosphere. All in all, the conference was definitely a great experience– thanks EES for funding the trip!"

Patricia writes: "Thanks to the EES travel grant I was able to attend the XVI Congress of European Mycologists. Here I had the chance of present the results of my master thesis in front of prestigious mycologists in a talk entitled: “Unraveling an enigma: ecology of waxcaps”. I also had the chance to learn the current state of mycology attending to several talks, I developed new ideas for further research, I made contact with prominent scientific from different countries and as an extra bonus I received a couple of PhD offerings. This was an extraordinary experience which I recommend to all young researchers."

Hanna writes: "Thanks to the EES travel grant - it supported my visit to the Losos Laboratory at Harvard University. I visited the lab for a two-month research internship. The Losos Lab has always intrigued me because of their outstanding work in ecology and evolutionary biology and because of the organisms they choose to work on. Mainly all research that is conducted in the lab is focused on Caribbean Anolis lizards. During my visit I had the chance to learn about lizards, their evolution, ecology and their role in natural science. I was involved in two research projects on phenotypic variation and its potential causes. The internship was definitely a great and work–intense experience that encouraged me to follow my interests about lizards. Fortunately I will return to the Losos Lab in March 2012 to continue my studies with Anolis lizards."

Jeannine writes: "Thanks to the EES travel grant, I joined the one-week EES summer school 2011 on phylogenetics. There I met many very passionate students interested in systematics from various fields of biology. Together with the choice of good teachers the summer school reached a high level of discussion related to current methods and different opinions in phylogenetics. Every student also had the chance to present some bits of their own work, which was very interesting and enhanced the scientific exchange of ideas. I enjoyed a lot meeting the students with an international background and am still surprised how often paths cross twice. Participating in the summer school highly encouraged me conducting future research in phylogenetics. I am also thankful, for the beautiful accommodation at the Chiemsee!"

Robert writes: "The EES Travel grant gave me the opportunity to visit the 104th Annual meeting of the German Zoological Society (DZG) from 9th to 12th of September 2011 in Saarbrücken (Germany). At the conference I gave a talk called: „ A non-invasive method to analyze Acanthaster planci using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and subsequent 3D reconstruction“ in the morphology section. After my talk there were fruitful discussions about my results and I received several good ideas and suggestions for my thesis. Further, I was asked to attend the DZG-Fachgruppe Morphology and Ecology in order to stay in contact and exchange experience with other scientists working with similar techniques in my field. Thank you EES for making this possible!"

Hannes writes: "Thanks to an EES travel grant, I had the opportunity to present results from my Diploma-thesis at this year’s Annual Meeting of the DZG in Saarbrücken from September 9th to 12th. My talk was entitled “Acanthaster planci – Plasticity and behavior?”. Nicely we were able to travel in a group of four Students of our lab from very different research interests. For most of us it was the first big conference and we all were giving talks so we profited a lot by Max Rabus who had more conference experience then us. I was also able to attend numerous presentations by well-known researchers and I liked it very much to see a lot of other early-career researchers presenting their work in talks and posters. I gained some ideas for very nice and simple experiments, learned some new methods and tools for data analysis and I was impressed by the amount of very young researches which were present at this conference. I also had the opportunity to join the “Ökologische Fachgruppe” of the DZG and the “Fachgruppe Morphology” and I will for example gain from this in form of a GIS workshop which is held by the “Fachgruppe Ökologie” in March 2012. Also I received very useful feedback on my talk and had nice discussion with other scientists from very young to experienced scientists. Moreover I met some people more related to my ongoing research topic “Plastic particles in aquatic ecosystems: occurrence and influence to aquatic organisms“. We also visited the Wildpark Saarbrücken, learned a lot about food in Saarbrücken and at the end of the conference we enjoyed the social event, the conference dinner with good food an nice conversations with other scientists and for example with some journal editors. I would like to thank the EES program at Ludwig Maximilians University for funding my trip to Saarbrücken, and I can only encourage other students to join the PhD program and apply for EES travel grants."

Monica writes: "Thanks to the EES Travel Grant provided by the EES Program, I had the chance to attend to the 16th European Congress of Herpetology at Luxemburg and Trier (Germany) from 25th to 29th of September 2011. For the first time, I had the opportunity to give a talk with prominent herpetologists in the audience. My talk was titled: “Analysis of the morphological evolution of mantellid frogs from Madagascar (Mantellidae): a possible case of Adaptive Radiation”. I attended the talks of several young researchers from the all over Europe. Additionally, I met several distinguished herpetologist, such as Profs. Miguel Vences, Walter Hödl and Salvador Carranza. During the congress I had the opportunity to gather ideas about my PhD possibilities and as an added bonus I also received offers. I strongly recommend my peers to attend such meetings, which was made possible through EES Travel Grant. Once again, I thank the EES Travel Grant for allowing me this opportunity."

Olivia writes: "Thanks to the EES travel grant, I was able to participate in the International Symposium Cladocera is a conference where all researchers working with Cladocera meet to present and discuss their current findings. In 2011, this conference was in Verbania, Italy. Throughout the week, there were 65 talks given, including plenary talks by two very important experts in my field of research. In addition, 58 posters were shortly advertised and then discussed in two large poster sessions. With this intense program I gained a detailed insight into the current hot topics of research on Cladocera from all aspects of ecology, evolution and systematics. I was able to collect many new ideas for my work. Moreover, I got into contact with many people working on my field of research. I met other researchers I consider to collaborate with and I was also able to discuss my work with the experts of my field. When I presented some of my own findings to the audience in a talk, I got a lot of feedback. This presentation was not only helpful for my project, but also established my presence into the scientific community. Overall, this experience gave me a lot of new contacts, new experiences and new ideas for my research."

Mingbo writes: "Thanks to the EES travel grant, I was able to participate in 13th Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) in Tübingen from August 20-25, 2011. The biennial Congress of ESEB is one of the largest scientific meetings in broadly defined evolutionary biology. This meeting brings together more than 1300 scientists and students who are interested in Evolution and Ecology this year. I have given a poster presentation entitled: “Fine-scale temporal and spatial variation of taxon and clonal structure in the Daphnia longispina hybrid complex in heterogeneous environments”, which initiated a lot of discussions during the poster section with the scientists and the students. By that, I received a lot of useful suggestions for my researches. Overall, I enjoyed very much and benefited a lot from this great and very well organized conference! Thanks again to EES for funding the trip."

Sidonie writes: "From 21 to 27 February 2011, I went to the Biosystematics congress in Berlin. This congress was meeting together people from very different fields, all having in commong their interest in systematic and evolutionary biology. The organizers invited well known researchers like S. Knapp, N. Eldredge or MTK Arroyo and to attend their conferences was for me a real pleasure. It was also very instructive to attend symposia dealing with recent problems and smart solutions for huge datasets management or data quality in phylogeny reconstruction. The travel grant gave me the opportunity to present the results of my Master thesis, where I worked on the evolution of plastid genomes in the Poaceae family, and did molecular dating in the genus Spartina, using Next Generation Sequencing data. This was the first time I present my results in English to a diverse and international scientific community, and I was proud to participate to this symposium on Next Generation Sequencing and Biodiversity, where the work of other participants was also so stimulating and brain-storming. Going to Berlin also gave me the opportunity to talk with people about research in the world and also to start a collaboration with a PhD student in Muenster (S. Wicke). I thank the EES PhD program for facilitating my attending to this high level congress, allowing me to meet such interesting people and to discover the Berlin botanical and zoological resources."

Juliana writes: "Thanks to an EES travel grant, I had the opportunity to present results from my ongoing Ph.D. research at this year’s “BioSystematics” meeting held in Berlin from February 21 to 27. My talk was entitled “Phylogeny and biogeography of the Alstroemeriaceae, an important clade of the Austral floristic realm,” and was part of a symposium about “Evolution of Organisms in Time and Space.” During this symposium and the week-long meeting, I had the opportunity to attend numerous presentations by other early-career researchers as well some well-known researchers, such as Michael Donoghue, Mary T. K. Arroyo, Peter Stevens, Paula Rudall, and James Mallet. I also had the opportunity to join the newly founded European Network for Neotropical Research in Evolution and Biogeography (ENNREB), organized by Alexandre Antonelli, Colin E. Hughes, Isabel SanMartin, Toby R. Pennington, and Colin Hughes, all of whom work in on the evolution and diversification of South American plants and from whom I received very useful feedback on my research, both directly at the meeting and in emails since. I also visited the herbarium at the Botanical Garden and Museum Berlin-Dahlem, which holds an important collection of Alstroemeria and Bomarea, the largest genera in Alstroemeriaceae. I had the opportunity to study more than 78 type specimens. As a result, I could confirm the identity of some of my collections at Munich, and also identified most of the undetermined specimens found in the Berlin herbarium. Importantly, I could also verify the type localities of a few species, information that is sometimes hard to obtain from literature or on the internet. I also made photos of 341 specimens, several of which I shall request on loan for further research. I would like to thank the EES program at Ludwig Maximilians University for funding my trip to Berlin, and I can only encourage other students to join the Ph.D. program and apply for EES travel grants."

Fernanda writes: "From February 21 to February 27, I participated in the 7th International Congress on Evolutionary and Systematic Biology held in Berlin. The meeting was attained by more than 600 participants from 55 countries, presenting more than 570 oral and poster contributions. The five conferences topics - Trends in Taxonomy, Evolution of Organisms in Time and Space, Evolution of Form and Function, The Evolutionary Though: History, Philosophy and Society, Inventorying and Managing Biodiversity are directly relevant to my ongoing Ph.D. research in plant systematics and evolution. This was my first the opportunity to present a talk at an international conference. It was entitled "The papaya tree (Carica papaya) belongs in an herbaceous Mesoamerican clade” and was part of a symposium organized by the newly founded Network for Neotropical Research in Evolution and Biogeography. I also joined this new network, which will help obtaining material and information relevant to my work. After the talk, several people gave me useful suggestions and comments concerning my research. All students eligible for the “Student Prize for best talk” received an evaluation form that included constructive feedback about the structure and slide design, presentation style and content, and scientific standing. Besides attending the conference it self, I had the opportunity to get to know modern tools during a “Software Bazaar” that presented different tools for systematics, collections management, and online data sharing. Some of the software that I saw will be useful for my goal of publishing online a complete modern treatment (i.e., a monograph) of Caricaceae, which an important part of my doctoral thesis. After the conference I spent one day in the herbarium at the Botanical Garden and Museum Berlin-Dahlem to study Caricaceae specimens. I saw a type specimen and also identified the undetermined specimens as a service to the herbarium. Study as many collections as possible is crucial for my monographic work on Caricaceae. I really enjoyed this conference, and it was a great opportunity to get in contact with senior scientists and other Ph.D. students. Thanks to the EES for the financial support!"

Stephan writes: "The EES program supported my participation at the Aquatic Sciences Meeting 2011 held in San Juan (Puerto Rico) by the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO). I gave a talk about my recent laboratory experiments dealing with the question of how diversty in phytoplankton communities effects trophic cascades in freshwater pelagic systems. After the talk, I got some very interesting questions and suggestions which might be useful for further experiments. With a total of more than 1,700 participants, this conference offered a huge array of talks on virtually any aquatic topic and I heard a lot of good and inspiring presentations. Beside the main conference schedule there was the ‘welcome mixer’ and the ‘conference dinner’, where I had enough time to talk with other students and meet scientists I had already collaborated with, namely the ‘marine lakes-group’ from UC Merced. And of course, I enjoyed the day after the conference visiting ‘El Yunque national park’, a tropical rainforest preserve located right in the beautiful mountainous midlands of Puerto Rico. Overall, this was a great experience and I am very grateful to EES for funding this trip."