PSGSD 2019: The first Plant Science Graduate Student Day of the University of Münster

Today, Dr. Maida Romera-Branchat organised the first Plant Science Graduate Student Day - PSGSD 2019 - for the students and doctoral candidates of plant-related research groups of the Institute for Biology and Biotechnology of Plants IBBP and of the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity IEB of the Faculty of Biology of our university. We started after lunch with short oral presentations of all groups, followed by an extended poster session. The first session was chaired by Sruthi Sreekumar, and the first short talk was given by Bruno Moerschbacher, explaining why we do what we do, followed by a longer presentation given by Philipp Lemke who described how we investigate structure-function relationships of chitosans aiming at the development of plant biostimulants for sustainable agriculture. In total, we had 22 oral presentations and more than 30 posters - quite a lot for half a day. But the 100+ (!) participants shared the general feeling at the end that it had been well worth the effort. We hope and trust that closer collaborations between the ‘green’ groups of our Faculty will arise from today’s interactions. And we see it as a sort of trial run for next year’s PSGSD which hopefully will include in addition green groups from other faculties of our university, from Chemistry and Pharmacy as well as from Landscape Ecology in the Geosciences. There is a lot of green sciences going on in Münster, and Maida did a great job today in beginning to make this more visible - to ourselves and to everyone interested out there.