PSSC at the IPB

From 28th to 31st of May the IPB was venue for this year’s Plant Science Student Conference (PSSC). With the motto Plant your Future! PhD students of different plant research institutes met for the ninth time in a row to present their current research results in various lectures and posters.

The organization of the meeting was exclusively taken over by PhD students of the IPB. In addition to many interesting series of lectures and poster sessions that extend over three days, also a hiking trip was organized, where the guests could visit the Botanical Garden of Halle or the famous anatomical Meckel Collections.

The invited guest speakers were Prof. Jonathan Gershenzon from the Max Planck Institute of Chemical Ecology in Jena, Prof. Rainer Breitling from the University of Manchester as well as Dr. Cyril Zipfel from Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich. They enriched the conference with very interesting talks and inspiring discussions.

The best lectures and posters were evaluated by the PhD students themselves and also by a jury, consisting of IPB members. The awards were presented on the last day of the conference. The PhD students selected Nicole Schmid from the IPK Gatersleben and Juliane Rausche from the IPB as winners for the best talk and the best poster, respectively.

The jury, consisting of Dr. Stefan Bennewitz (Dept. SZB), Dr. Katharina Bürstenbinder (Dept. MSV), Dr. Martin Dippe (Dept. NWC) and Dr. Lennart Eschen-Lippold (Dept. SEB), also awarded three places each for the best talk and the best Poster. The first place for the best talk went to Juliane Würdig vom JKI Dresden, followed by Christian Colmsee and Pooja Pandey, both from the IPK Gatersleben. The gold medal for the best poster was received by Sindy Schedel also from the IPK. Dinesh Dhurvas Chandrasekaran from the IPB and Raimund Nagel from the MPI Jena were also happy about silver and bronze, respectively. All the winners received a voucher of the bookstore Thalia.

The meeting ended with a farewell party for all participants on Friday evening. In a happy get-together, a special toast was proposed to the successful conference. Next year, the PSSC is again organized by PhD students from the IPK in Gatersleben.


All Photos: Dinesh Dhurvas Chandrasekaran and Hans Felix Schreckenbach (IPB)