In September the University of Exeter’s Penryn Campus hosted the 19th annual European Meeting of PhD Students in Evolutionary Biology (EMPSEB 19). SWDTP students Michael Hawkes and Emma Wood were both members of the organising committee and helped to run the conference.
EMPSEB provides a platform for PhD students studying Evolutionary Biology to present their work and to meet their peers from all over Europe. It takes place in a different European city each year and is organized by current PhD students in that country. The meeting is now an annual tradition that started 19 years ago with the first meeting back in 1995 being held in Zurich, Switzerland.
EMPSEB 19 was attended by over 70 PhD delegates and 9 plenary senior researchers who presented their research and attended workshops on topics such as open access publishing and public engagement. A wide array of research was on offer including the theoretical basis of marine sperm evolution, the lumpiness of bee genomes, Bengal tiger population structure, and harnessing lasers to track insects.