Hereroa Johnston, Galway, June 26-29 2018

7th Euro-Evo-Devo Meeting

4th year PhD student with Eric Röttinger, IRCAN, Nice

I am really grateful to have been awarded the SFDB travel grant. Thanks to this grant I had to opportunity to attend for the first time the European Evo Devo meeting, which took place at the National University of Ireland, Galway. This was truly an enriching experience, given the high diversity of background and field that where represented. But for me this was mostly the opportunity to give my first talk in an international meeting and gain a maximum of exposure. As a result of this large gathering, the choice of talk to attend was though. Since I am working on the cnidarian model Nematostella vectensis, I really enjoyed the presentation of the first single cell RNA sequencing work on this organism. I also could attend to several talks on regeneration, which is my main research area. It was interesting to see and talk about regeneration in different models. Such as the regeneration of the acoel Hoeftenia miamia exhibiting a general wound response. This was associated with the Egr pathway and is seemingly conserved across bilaterians.

As a PhD student in his 4th year, this meeting was for me a great success and a unique opportunity to present my work to internationally renowned scientists and to introduce myself to this community that I would like to integrate.

That’s why I thank the SFBD and the ITMO BCDE for giving me this travel grant which allowed me to take a crucial step in my young career as a researcher.