Data Science Days
The week opened with three days of statistics and data analysis at Neues Palais and Campus Golm. The programme was built around the research questions and datasets that matter in the CRC, covering data management and visualisation in R, univariate and multivariate statistics, machine learning, and genome-wide association studies. Lectures alternated with exercises so that participants could apply each method directly.
Almost the entire programme was taught from within the CRC. Robin Lindner, a PhD student in the CRC, gave the opening lectures on statistics, data management and visualisation in R and led most of the accompanying exercises, supported by fellow PhD student Emilian Paulitz. Sebastian Huß, postdoc in the CRC, and Bibiana Horn, PhD student, covered genome-wide association studies in both lectures and hands-on sessions. Prof. Detlef Groth (University of Potsdam) taught the advanced statistics sessions on bivariate and multivariate methods and machine learning.
Building the training around CRC datasets meant that participants could take the methods straight back into their own projects. Teaching it from within the consortium had a further effect: PhD students and postdocs from different projects now share a common set of methods and a common vocabulary for their data.
Phenotypic Plasticity Day
On 17 September, the Summer School opened its doors to the wider research community. Five invited speakers from four countries presented their work at Campus Golm, and the programme moved from enzyme function and cellular responses to natural variation, breeding and long-term evolutionary questions.
Sebastián Arenas (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) spoke about the norm of reaction in plant breeding, Ivo Feussner (University of Göttingen) on the function of Gretchen Hagen 3 enzymes, Jim Rowe (University of Sheffield) on leaf humidity and ABA responses at the cellular level, Wolfram Weckwerth (University of Vienna) on plant plasticity and natural variation in the holobiont panomics era, and Francesca De Giorgi (Anhalt University of Applied Sciences) on the evolution of phenotypic plasticity in a long-term biodiversity experiment.
What made the day work was not only the talks. The generous breaks turned into long conversations across fields that rarely meet in one room, from cell walls and metabolic models to epigenetics and ecology. For our PhD students and postdocs, it was a chance to meet the speakers directly and to discuss their own work with researchers from outside the CRC.
Career Day
The week closed at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology. In the morning, Dr. Maria Grazia Annunziata led a workshop on CVs and cover letters for applications beyond academia. In the afternoon, representatives from Springer Nature, 3PaTec, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Lipotype, KWS Saat, the Federal Office for Risk Assessment and Potsdam Science Park introduced their organisations and the roles that plant scientists and bioinformaticians can take on there, from research, bioinformatics and data science to sales, science communication and technology transfer. Three hours of open networking at the company booths followed, giving participants the chance to ask the questions that do not fit into a short talk.
Thank you
The Summer School was organised by an ECR committee: Ashwin Ananthanarayanan, Chi-Ying Hsueh, Dhanush Srikanthan, Emilian Paulitz, Prabal Das, Robin Lindner, Sebastian Huß, Sreyas Rajesh, and Sinah T. Ehlert. Our thanks go to them, to all speakers and trainers, to the employers who joined the Career Day, and to the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology for hosting the Career Day and supporting us throughout the day.
The CRC 1644 Summer School is part of the qualification programme for early career researchers in the Collaborative Research Centre 1644 "Phenotypic Plasticity in Plants", funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).