Juliane

On January 11, 2023, Rens Voesenek received a royal decoration ‘Ridder in de Orde van Oranje-Nassau’ for his exceptional contribution to society and more specifically, the sector Biology in the Netherlands. The decoration was awarded by the mayor of Oss in the Botanical Garden Greenhouse in Utrecht. His major role in restructuring the department Biology of the Utrecht University and his contribution as a chair of a taskforce to establish the national Sector plan Biology were highlighted. Also as chair of the EPS board he is widely appreciated. Rens can be characterised as an excellent scientist with vision, perseverance, excellent communication skills, [...]

  Wientjes receives the M-grant of the NWO Open Competition Domain Science. M-grants are intended for realising curiosity-driven, fundamental research of high quality and/or scientific urgency.   Mapping photosynthetic light harvesting and light acclimation in three dimensions Dr. Emilie Wientjes (WUR) Revealing photosynthetic regulation at the nanoscale - Plants and algae use light energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugars. The light is harvested in a heavy folded membrane, called the thylakoid, that sits inside the chloroplast. What the 3D structure of the thylakoid membrane is and how this structure can change under the influence of light is thus [...]

  Microorganisms are important for crop resilience and human and animal health. Possible adaptation of this so-called microbiome offers great opportunities for society. After all, this microbiome performs important functions in terms of protection against pathogens, nutrient availability and digestion of food. The three awarded projects will provide more insight into the microbiome as a whole, its function in soil or in agriculture and horticulture, and its transmission to humans and animals. The three consortia will investigate the effects of the soil microbiome on human health, the potential to grow better crops after microbiome adaptations, and exploiting peptide-producing microbiota for [...]

"HEAT: High temperature Effect on Aradiposis and Tomato seed quality" is the name of the proposal that was awarded to Leonie Bentsink. It is based on a proposal written by Lars Barkermans under the supervision of Mariana Silva Artur and Leónie Bentsink and original submitted to the EPS talent programme. Abstract Seeds are the starting material of agriculture. Climate changes, especially high temperatures, affect seed quality. In this proposal we aim at investigating the effect of high temperature on seed quality. We aim at studying if effects of high temperature can be transferred to the harvested seeds by means of seed treatments. We [...]

The Executive Board has appointed Marnix Medema as professor holding a personal chair in Bioinformatics in the Plant Sciences Group at Wageningen University & Research (WUR). The appointment is effective from 1 December. Marnix Medema (1986) studied biology at Radboud University Nijmegen. In 2009, he received his PhD from the University of Groningen with a project on the discovery of new antibiotics based on genetic information from bacteria. After his PhD graduation, Medema worked at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology (Bremen, Germany), where he assembled a large international consortium to assemble experimental data on biosynthetic gene clusters in [...]

After more than 10 years as Theme coordinator 4 Eric Schranz stepped down. During the Theme 4 symposium in December hold in Amsterdam he introduced Aalt-Jan van Dijk (Bioinformatics, WUR) as the new theme 4 coordinator. Together with Maike Stam (UvA) he will organize the EPS Theme 4 symposium and will be part of the research committee. Big thank you to Eric Schranz for all the fantastic work he did as a theme coordinator.