2023
December 2023: Experimental Evolution course
Also this year our students organised the international practical course "Experimental evolution: Exploring evolutionary forces in controlled environments” from Nov 27 to Dec 1, 2023 at the Vetmeduni. Our students planned the entire course, invited speakers for the morning sessions, screened applications from around the world and taught and tutored all practical sessions for the participants to train on real data.
Link to course website
November 2023: PopGen Xmas
We recently enjoyed a Xmas dinner to celebrate a successful year soon coming to an end. Ice skating had been planned as our team activity but was was postponed for later this December due to bad weather.
October 2023: retreat
31 PhD students and faculty joined this year's retreat at the beautiful surroundings of Altaussee. We had great weather at the foot of the Loser mountain and listened to exciting talks with plenty of discussion opportunities, had a free afternoon for hikes and relaxing and enjoyed traditional food, good company and a night walk.
September 2023: "Stormy" get-together
Our new cohort of students was welcomed to the PopGen Vienna crowd by Christian Schlötterer, enjoying mild September weather with "Sturm" - partially fermented, new wine. Harvest season is a meaningful time for several projects run at the program as pomace at the vinyards is Drosophila Eldorado and perfect for collecting flies.
July 2023: Poster award
Elif Bozlak (Wallner group) received a poster award at the 39th ISAG (International Society for Animal Genetics) conference 2023 in Cape Town, South Africa. Her poster's title: „The first Rangifer tarandus Y chromosomal phylogeny“
July 2023: PhD defense
Filip Wierzbicki (Kolfer group) successfully defended his PhD thesis "Transposable elements and piRNA clusters in Drosophila". Congratulations!
June 2023: PhD defense
Ben Wölfl (Hermisson group) successfully defended his PhD thesis "A theory of oligogenic adaptation of a quantitative trait". Congratulations!
May 2023: Final Symposium
More than 50 former and current members of the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics met to celebrate the conclusion of 12 successful years of the FWF-funded DK. Two full days of exciting talks by alumni, current students and SAB members were part of the Final Symposium from May 15-17 at Hirschwang/Reichenau a.d. Rax.
May 2023: PhD defense
Congratulations to Wei-Yun Lai (Schlötterer group) on successfully defending her PhD thesis entitled "The role of polygenic adaptation and genetic redundancy in gene expression evolution".
