Congratulations to Bernice Sepers for winning a postdoctoral fellowship from the Bielefeld Young Researcher’s Fund to develop her own project working on fur seal epigenetics. We are looking forward to welcoming Bernice to the lab early next year!

It was a great pleasure to host the coordination meeting of the Schwerpunktprogramm 1158‒Antarktisforschung here in Bielefeld. Much exciting science was discussed and a great time was had by all!

Thank you to everyone that attended our Polar Genomics workshop, organised as part of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Priority Programme 1158, “Antarctic Research with Comparative Investigations in Arctic Ice Areas”.  Special thanks also to our three excellent plenary speakers – Melody Clark, Charlotte Havermans, and Ken Halanych! We look forward to seeing you all again soon!

Massive congratulations to Kosmas Hench for winning a one-year fellowship from the Bielefeld Young Researcher’s Fund Career Bridge PhD-Postdoc. Kosmas will be joining the group to develop his own project proposal to work on Antarctic fur seal genomics. Welcome, Kosmas!

We would like to welcome Ane-Liv Berthelsen, who will be joing our lab for the next few months as a visiting researcher. Ane-Liv will be helping us with our long-term study of Antarctic fur seals.

A warm welcome to Ramona Mattmueller, who is starting her PhD on ‘comparing polar ocean soundscapes – investigating the influence of anthropogenic noise and changing sea ice conditions on the noise budgets and marine mammal communities of two polar regions’. Ramona will be jointly supervised by Joe and Ilse Van Opzeeland from the AWI and the HIFMB. We’re excited about this project and look forward to working together!

A big welcome to Rebecca Chen, who joins the lab this week to start her PhD on the ‘genomic analysis of inbreeding, DNA methylation and sexual trait expression in black grouse’. Rebecca will be co-supervised by Joe, Carl Soulsbury (University of Lincoln) and Kees van Oers (the Netherlands Institute of Ecology). We are looking forward to working together on this exciting project!

An exciting opportunity is available for a three year PhD studentship to work on the evolutionary genomics of sexual trait expression in an iconic avian model system, the black grouse. We are seeking a candidate with strong quantitative skills, a keen interest in population genetics, and ideally experience of working with genomic data.

The deadline for applications is extended to 30th April 2021. All materials should be e-mailed as a single PDF to: joseph.hoffman[at]uni-bielefeld.de with ‘PhD application’ in the subject line.

Please see the attached PDF for more details about the position and do not hesitate to contact me with any questions at joseph.hoffman[at]uni-bielefeld.de.

We are grateful to the DFG for funding our new project on inbreeding, epigenetics and sexual trait expression in black grouse, together with Carl Soulsbury and Kees van Oers. We will advertise the PhD studentship shortly. Please watch this space!

Congratulations to David Vendrami for winning a six month outgoing postdoc from the DAAD. David will be learning seascape genetics together with Prof. Mary Wisz at the World Maritime University.