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March 2024

December 2023

  • 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
     
  • We enjoyed our Xmas dinner to celebrate a successful year soon coming to an end, and, some days later, conquered the ice for a fun skating evening.

November 2023

October 2023

September 2023

  • Our new cohort of students (Sara, Bilge, Sarah, Siraj, Sriparna, Shahab and Amin) was welcomed to the PopGen 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.

August 2023

July 2023

June 2023

May 2023

April 2023

February 2023

December 2022

  • New preprint by Selvaraju, Wierzbicki and Kofler in bioRxiv: P-element invasions in Drosophila erecta shed light on the establishment of host control over a transposable element.

  • Students of the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics organise the practical course "Experimental evolution: Bringing theory and practice together” from December 5 to 9, 2022 at the Vetmeduni Vienna. Our students coodinated the entire course, invited speakers, screened applications from around the world and planned, taught and tutored all practical sessions for the participants to train on real data.

    Link to course website

  • We had a nice get-together for our Xmas party painting mugs and plates for colleagues, and enjoyed pizza. We celebrate a successful year, slowly emerging from the pandemic restrictions.
     
  • Congratulations to Neda Barghi and colleagues! The Austrian Science Fund FWF approved the Special Research Programme (SFB) "Polygenic adaptation: from single selected loci to the infinitesimal model", lead by Neda Barghi. During a 4-year period, funds of 3,9 million Euro will enable the SFB members to conduct excellent research in the field of population genetics. The SFB is a joint collaboration of Neda Barghi (speaker), Robert Kofler and Christian Schlötterer (Institute of Population Genetics, Vetmeduni), vice speaker Joachim Hermisson and Himani Sachdeva (Univ. of Vienna), Magnus Nordborg and Kelly Swarts (GMI), and Nick Barton (ISTA).

November 2022

October 2022

Retreat

This year's retreat led 22 PhD students and faculty to the beautiful surroundings of Altaussee. The autumn weather was mild and sunny at the foot of the stunning Loser mountain. We enjoyed talks with plenty of discussion opportunities, an afternoon exploring the mountain trails and the nearby lake, and two evenings with traditional food, good company and a night walk.

 

September 2022

August 2022

June 2022

  • Head of institute Christian Schlötterer, PopGen Vienna students Dagny Runarsdottir and Benjamin Wölfl (Univ. of Vienna), and former PopGen Vienna faculty member Angela Hancock are currently hosted by the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP). KITP as part of the University of California, Santa Barbara, is one of the most renowned institutes for theoretical physics and related fields. Christian Schlötterer was invited to co-coordinate the KITP workshop “Towards an Integrative View of Adaptation: Bridging Population and Quantitative Genetics” (June 13 - July 15, 2022).

Mai 2022

April 2022

  • Congratulations to Aglaia Szukala (PopGen Vienna / Paun group) on her successful PhD defense: "Parallel and adaptive processes during ecotype formation in Heliosperma pusillum"

March 2022

  • Congratulations to PopGen Vienna alumna Polina Novikova, currently group leader at MPIZ in Cologne, on securing an ERC Starting Grant! Novikova lab: https://www.mpipz.mpg.de/novikova

February 2022

  • Congratulations to Marta Pelizzola (Futschik group) on her successful PhD defense: "Developing and testing statistical methods for experimental evolution".

January 2022

  • Congratulations to Florian Schwarz (Kofler group) on his successful PhD defense: "Towards unraveling the dynamics of transposable elements."

December 2021

November 2021

  • Congratulations to Robert Kofler on two FWF grants! ( P34965 “Unravelling the dynamics of transposable elements with long-read sequencing” and P35093 “Does the size of piRNA clusters predict the abundance of transposable element insertions?”)
  • Congratulations to Sheng-Kai Hsu (Schlötterer group) on his successful PhD defense: "The role of sex evolution - Sexual conflict and Sexual selection."

October 2021

Retreat

After the pandemic forced us to skip last year's retreat, we decided to seize our 100% vaccination status to spend two days at the huts of Feuerkogel (Upper Austria). We had small group workshops, enjoyed some hiking (despite very uninviting weather) and comforting mountain food at 1600m elevation. It was great to catch up on research and friendships after the long break - finally face to face!

 

September 2021

  • Congratulations to Anna Maria Langmüller (Schlötterer group) on her PhD zoom defense entitled "The detection of temperature-dependent fitness effects with Evolve and Resequence experiments". We wish Anna all the best for her new adventures as a postdoc at Cornell Univ. (US)

Hike

We enjoyed a hike among the "Vienna Woods" with wonderful weather. After a long time with no social activities due to the pandemic, it was a special treat to spend time together! Dr. Sam Yeaman (Univ. of Calgary, currently on sabbatical) joined us and it was great to discuss latest research in person.

 

August 2021

July 2021

June 2021

  • Paper recently accepted in Mol Ecol Res by Wierzbicki,* Schwarz*, Cannalonga and Kofler: Novel quality metrics allow identifying and generating high-quality assemblies of piRNA clusters. *shared authorship
  • Congratulations to Lara Radovic (Wallner group), winner of the student competition (genetics) at the Equine Science Society Virtual Symposium!

May 2021

  • Scientific Advisory Board was organized online (May 17-20).

April 2021

  • Congratulations to Emmanouil Lyrakis (Schlötterer group) on the highest exam grade for his PhD zoom defense "The physiological and genetic basis of reproductive dormancy in Drosophila fruit flies". We're happy to keep Manolis at the Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Platform.

March 2021

  • Congratulations to Martin Pontz (Bürger group) on successfully defending his PhD thesis "Effects of epistasis in population genetic two-locus models" online.
  • Congratulations to Rui Borges on his FWF grant "PoMo-cod: a polymorphism-aware phylogenetic codon model".

February 2021

  • Alumnus Thomas Taus was promoted to Teamleader - Reporting and Analysis at Porsche Informatik GmbH in Salzburg. Congratulations!
  • Congratulations to our PhD candidate Anna Maria Langmüller, she received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship for 2 years of postdoctoral research at Cornell University and 1 year back at Univ. of Vienna!

January 2021

  • Congratulations to Christina Hedderich on winning the 1st prize for her poster "Population genomics shows last European stand of Artemisia laciniata is diverse despite population size" at the poster competition of the virtual edition of the 54th Population Genetics Group Meeting.