Read about the upcoming Fascination of Plants Day and PlantLink Day and personnel changes in PlantLink along with news about other meetings and opportunities for plant scientists. This newsletter also contains an interview with Federico Gomez, our new director!
Newsletter content
- Join us for the Fascination of Plants Day 18 May!
- Sign up for PlantLink day “New plant products” 5 October!
- High time to register for ELLS summer courses
- ELLS annual student conference 23-24 September in Prague
- Kick-off new Food Faculty network, save the date!
- Virtual tour of the NaPPI plant phenotyping online
- CroopBooster-P end meeting
- NordPlant annual day
- New steering committee member
- SLU Grogrund’s new educational portal
- Support to Ukrainian scientists
- Our coordinator is leaving!
- Researcher in the spotlight: Federico Gomez
1. Join us for the Fascination of Plants Day 18 May!
We will celebrate this year’s Fascination of plants day on the 18 of May with a seminar with the theme ”Plants to the rescue? Roles of plants to mitigate climate change”. This will be an open meeting in Lund from 15:00 in Blå Hallen in the Ecology building (Sölvegatan 37) where we hope to attract students and others interested in the topic. The invited speakers are Marie Nyman, retiring Chief Secretary of Gentekniknämnden, Eva Johansson, director of SLU Grogrund, Martin Sykes, professor emeritus in plant ecology, and Eva Tornberg, professor emeritus and founder of Veg of Lund. The seminar will be moderated by Peter Sylwan.
It is also a great chance to come and coffee mingle with our incoming director, Federico Gomez, and maybe also our new coordinator! Register here.
2. Sign up for PlantLink day “New plant products” 5 October!
The program for the upcoming PlantLink day with the theme “New plant products” is taking shape. We now have three confirmed keynote speakers. Robert Brummer (Örebro University, Sweden), on the topic of Plant-based Proteins for Health and Wellbeing and the national research center PAN Sweden, Heiko Rischer (VTT, Finland), on the topic of Plant cell cultures as food, and their work with coffee cells, and Morten Ambye-Jenson (Aarhus University, Denmark) on protein extraction from grasses and herbaceous legumes. The PlantLink day 2022 is on the 5th of October at SLU Alnarp, and will start before lunch with a tour of the Plant Protein Factory, and continue with seminars during the afternoon. Sign up for the event already now here!
3. High time to register for ELLS summer courses
After two years of pandemics the ELLS summer courses for MSc students and early PhDs are starting again. Please find the programs here. Among the courses is the course “Digital breeding” at BOKU, Austria, for which more info can be found here, and “Information technologies and expert systems in Plant Protection” at UHOH, Germany.
4. ELLS annual student conference 23-24 September in Prague
MSc students! Save the dates 23-24 September 2022 to join the ELLS annual student conference. It is a great venue to meet up with fellow European students in the life sciences in a broad sense. This year’s theme is “The Interconnectedness of Things: A Path Towards Sustainable Solutions”. For SLU students, it is possible to apply for travel grants for this event and summer schools. More information on the conference here.
5. Kick-off new Food Faculty network, save the date!
Our incoming director, Federico Gomez, is together with Deniz Koca, Emma Nordell, and Henrik Söndergård planning a “kick off” of the new Food Faculty network. An invitation will come to all PlantLink-associated researchers. Preliminary, the date will be 26th of April in the afternoon. Please save the date for the kick off meeting!
6. Virtual tour of the NaPPI plant phenotyping online
As part of the NordPlant university hub, we had a virtual tour of the NaPPI plant phenotyping facility at University of Helsinki two weeks ago. You can now find the recording of the virtual lunch here.
7. CroopBooster-P end meeting
CropBooster-P where PlantLink is one of the stakeholders have their end meeting April 26 in Wageningen, where the outcomes of this 4-year project will be reported. Siri Caspersen at SLU Alnarp’s BT department will represent PlantLink at this meeting, which will be a physical event only.
8. NordPlant annual day
The next NordPlant annual day will be 30 November in Lund with the theme “Envirotyping for plant breeding and precision agriculture”. It will be held in conjunction with the Göte Turesson jubilee commemorating 100 years since the term Ecotype was coined. We have already some very prominent keynote speakers who have confirmed their attendance. More info to come next month, but please save the date.
9. New PlantLink steering committee member
We welcome the new steering committee member representing Region Skåne, Karl Magnus Adielsson who is a Senior Environmental Strategist at Region Skåne. At the same time, we would like to thank Jenny Bergsten for her contributions to the steering committee during the last 3 years!
10. SLU Grogrund’s new educational portal
SLU Grogrund has just launched an educational portal, which is good to share with undergraduate students. It will soon also appear in English.
11. Support to Ukrainian scientists
EPSO is calling out to offer support to Ukrainian scientists and end of the war in Ukraine. Read more about this initiative and how you as a researcher can help on their homepage.
12. Our coordinator is leaving!
At the end of this month Sofia Marmon steps down as the PlantLink coordinator. We thank Sofia for the tremendous work she has done over the last two years! Starting in the middle of a pandemic was not easy, but Sofia found her way quickly and was a swift adapter of online tools for networking and meetings. She will stay in the environment though, as a WP leader within ScanOats.
13. Researcher in the spotlight: Federico Gomez
Read more about the research and background of our incoming director, Federico Gomez, who is this month’s researcher in the spotlight. Federico will take over as director from 1 July.