In the first 6 months of my current postdoctoral research project I have been busy in the lab accomplishing the set out goals, learning techniques and developing experimental design for the projects.
A lot of the accumulated data from this time has been presented and discussed at two international conferences. I travelled to Oxford in December 2017 to meet fellow coral researchers at the European Coral Reef Symposium held in Oxford. My research was approved to give an oral presentation, which gave my research a great exposure and lead to very productive discussions and feedback. At the beginning of February, 2018, I was fortunate to present my research with an oral presenation and a poster at a Gordon Research Conference with the topic ‘Oxygen Radicals – Biology and Pathobiology of Oxygen Radicals from Cell Signaling and Detection to Therapy’ in California, US. This conference was a bit different to previous conference gatherings I had joined so far but it was highly interdisciplinary and thereby very inspirational and enjoyed the active networking and discussing.
Apart from conferences I also attended a very valuable workshop at Unisense (http://www.unisense.com/), where I could upskill on my existing microsensor application skills and discuss with user experts the applications I have in mind for future experiments. It was a great gathering over 3 consecutive days and I thoroughly enjoyed the lectures and talks by the knowledgeable people running Unisense as well as fellow microsensor users.
Part of my research project is going to take place at the Alfred-Wegener Institute (AWI) in Bremerhaven in collaboration with Professor Doris Abele and Dr. Julia Strahl. We held our entry meeting at the AWI in September 2017 and discussed the planned application and techniques I would like to apply. Experiments are going to commence in July 2018 and initial pilot experiments are starting to roll out here at the Marine Biology Section in Helsingør shortly.
Verena Schrameyer, PhD 