Last week, on Thursday and Friday, it was once again time for BLAM. BLAM is a two-day conference arranged by the PhD students at the department. The first six years, the weather was more than fine. The first spring sun shone from a cloud-free sky. No one thought there could be cold, clouds and rain during BLAM. But… there could be. This year, however, we had both clouds and sunshine. Next year we wish for a sunny BLAM on both days.
Those were the only clouds during the conference. It started with one of the invited speakers, Ludovic Orlando, who told us about “The genomic history of the domestic horse”. By looking at horse genes he and his team could tell when the horse got domesticated.
Before that, there were some workshops pre-starting the conference. This year the PhD students could learn about data management, publications and academic career, research funding, posters and scientific figures.
From the other invited speaker, Ellen Decaestecker, we learnt about the microbiome in the daphnia in her talk “Phenotypic mediated switches induced by host genotype x microbiome interactions”. All the other talks were by the PhD students. There were talks about how dung beetles navigate, the needs of soil microbes, manipulation of macrophages, telomere length, carbon in seagrass meadows, dating damselflies, growth in Streptomyces, pheromone receptors, neural cultures, and much more.
There were both 12 minutes talks and 3 minute flash talks. Each kind a challenge in different ways. It was very hard for the jury to choose between all the great talks this year. However, the prize for the best long talk went to Valentin Gillet for his talk “A novel navigation circuit in the central complex of the insect brain”.
But the jury, which consisted of Ellen Decaester, Olivier Van Aken, Jan-Åke Nilsson, Klas Flärdh and Inger Ekström, could not decide between Katie Laschanzky and Elana Rae Engert. They both got a prize for the best flash talk. Susana Garcia Dominguez got the best poster prize for her cartoon-like poster “Particle deposition and their physiological effects on birds: an experimental approach”.
There were not only talks and posters. A main aim of this conference is also to get together and meet people you don’t talk to every day. Thursday’s social event consisted of a light dinner as well as a pub quiz. On Friday it was time for the 10-year anniversary party. It was actually 13 years since the Department of Biology was created, but the pandemic came in the way of partying.
I want to thank all the organisers for a wonderful BLAM and I look forward to next year.
Text Inger Ekström, photo Inger Ekström and Anders Örtegren
