Home » Events » Next Generation Events » Next generation scientists 2014

Thanks for taking part!

Thank you to all of our organisers, speakers, mentors, and delegates for making the New Phytologist next generation scientists meeting in Norwich enjoyable, stimulating and productive. New Phytologist next generation scientists was a fully-funded event for early-career scientists held at the John Innes Centre (Norwich, UK) on 29–30 July 2014. Further information can be found below and on the linked pages, or feel free to contact us with any queries by email at np-symposia@lancaster.ac.uk.

 

Post-meeting updates

Meeting background and scope

With support from the New Phytologist Trust and Wiley, New Phytologist next generation scientists was a fully-funded event with the unique aim to provide the next generation of plant scientists a chance to share their work with their peers and outstanding international scientists in a stimulating, supportive and exciting environment. The meeting took place in July 2014 at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, UK.

 

Key points:

  • With a focus on early-career scientists, registration was open to anyone with up to five years’ experience post-PhD, excluding career breaks.
  • Four high-profile speakers were invited to give plenary lectures and selected delegates were also invited to give talks about their work.
  • Breaks, a poster session and a social event provided opportunities to build collaborations with peers and to receive advice and feedback from established scientists in the field.
  • All delegates were given the opportunity to present and discuss their work via oral or poster presentations. Five poster prizes were awarded based on assessments by the delegates
  • Workshop on ‘How to get your work published’, run by Chris Surridge, Chief Editor, Nature Plants (http://www.nature.com/nplants/) and Alistair Hetherington, Editor-in-Chief, New Phytologist.
  • The event was fully-funded and registration was free, included meals, accommodation and a travel grant.

 

Poster prizes

Congratulations to the winner of the New Phytologist poster prize:

Shanta Karki, P38, ‘Creation of C4 rice through genetic engineering’

 

Congratulations also to the four runner-up prize winners:

Hannah Kuhn, P42, ‘Involvement of ORA59 in mlo-based resistance of Arabidopsis thaliana against powdery mildew fungi’

Jack Lee, P47, ‘TaR1 provides a link between chromatin remodelling and wheat defence against Mycosphaerella graminicola’

Shane Rothwell, P68, ‘Liming (to recommended rates) limits legume growth and gas exchange by increasing root-to-shoot signalling of the phytohormone abscisic acid’

James Rowe, P69, ‘Stress that cress! Osmotic stress and root development in Arabidopsis’

 

Feedback

The meeting was a great success and we have received a lot of very positive and encouraging feedback. We hope to run similar meetings in the future so if you have any suggestions on how we could improve this event please get in touch: np-symposia@lancaster.ac.uk.

Below are some of the comments we received from the meeting’s delegates:

 

Great organization, excellent content, great focus and selection of topics! Over the course of 24 hours I shared my research with more people (through having conversations) than during a 4 day conference where I gave a talk (!).

 

Thank you for the nice meeting!

 

This was a really amazing symposium. I would highly recommend hosting this event on an annual or biennial basis. Seems that everyone benefitted from the event.

 

Everything there was well prepared and all the speakers were excellent.

 

As the workshop included the whole field of plant science, I was a bit concerned that I might hear quite some talks without any interest to me. This was not the case at all, however. The talks were all very interesting and of high quality.

 

Just wanted to say I had a great time at the 'New Phytologist next generation scientists' symposium, so thanks for doing a great job! Excellent speakers and a great atmosphere. Hope it runs again!

 

In my opinion, 2 days are not sufficient to meet lots of people and share any ideas between us. Except for this, everything was wonderful.

 

Thanks for a wonderful meeting! It was fun and interesting.

 

Many thanks to you and all the New Phyt staff for organizing such an inspiring and successful Next Generation Scientists conference. The calibre of the presentions, both oral and posters, was very high and the topics were very enjoyably diverse and yet accessible. The JIC as a venue worked very well and I can see that a lot of thought and energy was put into the whole event- with fantastic results. I am very glad to have been a part of it.

 

Thanks again for a great conference. I had lots of fun and saw some great talks.

 

Excellent first meeting, hope it continues in years to come. I have encouraged late PhD students in my department to look for this meeting in the coming years.

 

It was a very successful symposium which provided great opportunities for everyone to establish new friendship/potential collaborations.

 

Thank you very much to you for the wonderful organisation, and also for making everything so easy, accesible and interesting. I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity to live that experience, and will definitely recommend everyone around to join the next NPNextGen symposiums.

 

I would like to thank you and all of the organizers of the New Phytologist next generation scientists for the excellent organization of the event, I really had an amazing experience there.

 

The high level of diversity (research backgrounds, home countries, etc.) yet small size made this event a huge success that, as you had said, developed contacts that will last throughout our careers. I certainly hope that New Phytologist will continue this unique meeting.

 

Thank you very much! It was a fantastic meeting!

 

Funding

New Phytologist next generation scientists was a fully-funded meeting and was co-funded by the New Phytologist Trust and Wiley.

 

 

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