On 21-22 February 2019 thirty PhD students, postdocs and PIs met for a workshop focusing on experimental evolution organized by EvoPAD PhD students Nina Kranke and Ana Lindeza. On the first day, keynote speakers Claudia Fricke (University of Münster), Eric Desjardins (Western University, CA), Thomas Flatt (EvoPAD Mercator Fellow, University of Fribourg, CH), and Henrique Teotónio (University of Paris, FR) presented concepts, examples, challenges in experimental design, omics technologies for analyses and philosophical aspects of experimental evolution. The talks were followed by a poster session where graduate students presented and discussed their projects with the keynote speakers and other participants. On the second day, the participants gathered in small groups to discuss appropriate controlling of experimental evolution experiments, the use of genonimcs vs. transcriptomics as analysis tools in experimental evolution and external validity. At the end of the workshop, the participants concluded that the workshop was resoundingly successful and provided valuable insights on planning and running an experimental evolution project. The programme of the workshop can be downloaded here.

Presenting research in concise, interesting and convincing publications represents a challenge for many scientists. Yet, since success in the academic field is highly dependent on successful publication, formal training in scientific writing provides an excellent opportunity to learn scientific writing essentials. On 29-30 January 2019 EvoPAD PhD students completed a course on scientific writing taught by Dr. Melanie Conrad from the Charité Berlin. The course comprised lectures and interactive exercises on general writing guidelines and the challenges and requirements of scientific writing. A PhD student commented after the workshop: "This should be a compulsory workshop for PhD students in biology. I think it would be helpful in any stage of their PhD."

The quality of research is inextricably linked to good scientific practice. The EvoPAD PhD students successfully completed a training on the basic rules and values of responsible conduct in research in all its stages on 27 - 28 March 2018. They explored differences and grey areas between good scientific practice, questionable research practice and scientific misconduct and learned how misconduct can be recognized and prevented. The workshop was held by Dr. Michael Gommel from the Institut für systemische Medizin- und Organisationsethik. The PhD students concluded after the workshop: “Actually every researcher should have had such a course at one point of his studies.”.