News archive 2013
November 2013: Christmas Event
On November 21, around 30 students, postdocs and faculty of PopGen Vienna showed their creativity at our social ceramic painting event! Everyone was Secret Santa for a colleague, and many beautiful, funny and extraordinary mugs were the result. After three hours of painting we enjoyed American food at a cosy diner in the 9th district.
November 2013: PhD defense
Ada Akerman (PI Reinhard Bürger) successfully defended her thesis "The effects of dominance, linkage, and gene flow on local adaptation and differentiation".
We congratulate Ada and wish her all the best for her future career.
November 2013: Faculty meeting
Faculty meeting 5 took place on November 6.
November 2013: Mind The Gap Meeting
On 1st and 2nd of November we hosted the 4th MIND THE GAP meeting at the new premises of the Faculty of Mathematics. MIND THE GAP aims at bringing together theoretical and empirical population geneticists. This conference is the fourth meeting in a series of conferences held in Freiburg (2009), Plön (2010), and Cologne (2011). Details about the meeting here
September 2013: PhD retreat
This year we moved our traditional retreat location from Feuerkogel a bit towards the South: we spent a social weekend with seminar talks at a cosy hut village at Altaussee, at the foot of the Styrian Loser plateau. 33 registered participants (PhD students, postdocs, faculty and associated guests of The Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics) enjoyed an inspiring weekend with seminars, discussions, brainstorming and hiking.
September 2013: 4th DK Welcome Event
Although the weather was not very inviting on September 13, we followed the good old tradition to show our new students a few Viennese locations off the beaten track.
We explored a historical festival at Schloß Neugebäude in the 11th district where some mead warmed us up for a happy group foto.
A stroll brought us to a nearby restaurant to enjoy delicious Schnitzel creations, Sturm and candle light. We stayed there until late while chatting about each other's projects and experiences. A warm welcome to our 2013 cohort: Kerstin, Barbara, Gökce, Paul and Dominik!
September 2013: Introductory course
This year's Population Genetics Introductory Course for PhD students was divided into two intense blocks during September and October. We had more international participants than ever before - students from New Zealand all from all around Europe joined to learn about basic concepts in population genetics, Drosophila genetics, statistics, biomathematics, phylogenetics and bioinformatics. During the October units, more than a dozen Marie Curie ESRs from the ITN Intercrossing took part in our course.
September 2013: PhD defense
Nicola de Maio (PI Carolin Kosiol) successfully defended his thesis entitled "Accounting for Genomic Variation in Phylogenetic Substitution Models" on Tuesday, September 3, 2013.
We congratulate Nicola and wish him all the best for his next steps, he will soon move to Oxford to continue research as a Postdoc.
August 2013: Visiting scientist
Research assistant professor Christopher Willett visits us for a second time. Chris investigates the nature of genetic variation that underlies speciation and adaptation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In collaboration with members of the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics, he will continue to study the genes that interact deleteriously to generate postzygotic reproductive isolation in a copepod system. He also looks at thermal tolerance and its potential interactions with reproductive isolation.
June 2013: PhD defense
Martin Kapun (PI Christian Schlötterer) successfully defended his thesis entitled "The genetic basis of adaptive evolution in Drosophila melanogaster".
We congratulate Martin and wish him all the best for his future career! Martin works now as a Postdoc in Thomas Flatt's group at the University of Lausanne.
May 2013: SAB meeting
The yearly Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) meeting took place on May 13 and 14. This year six SAB members traveled to Vienna from 5 countries to listen to our student's progress reports and to give valuable advice on how to further improve the direction and success of their research projects.
April 2013: poster award
We're proud of Agnes Jonas (PI Carolin Kosiol), one of our 2012 cohort students, to have been awarded the poster prize at the 23rd annual MASAMB workshop (Mathematical and Statistical Aspects of Molecular Biology) recently held at the Imperial College London. The winning poster is entitled "Modelling Allele Frequency Trajectories of Experimental Evolution with Fruit Flies"
February 2013: visiting student
Mads Fristrup Schou is a PhD student in the Volker Loeschcke group at the section of Integrative Ecology and Evolution at Aarhus University, Denmark. He uses experimental evolution to assess the evolutionary potential of Drosophila melanogaster as a response to increasing temperatures. The experimental evolution setup included populations of different size, adding another perspective to the project. He conducted such an experiment in Denmark, where he focused on the change in phenotypic traits.
In collaboration with PhD students, postdocs and faculty of the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics he will work on genomic data obtained from the experimental evolution project. Genomic data from different time points will be used to address questions regarding patterns of selection and loss of genetic variance across different treatments and different population sizes.
January 2012: Faculty meeting
The fourth faculty meeting happened on January 29, 2013
