Martin is also leaving us for a while.  He’s heading off to Cape Town on a 25 day biological cruise organised by the Maritime University.  We wish him a fantastic trip!

Emily is heading off to Bird Island, South Georgia, to spend a field season working on fur seals.  best of luck and have a wonderful time!

After a nine-month internship in our lab, sadly we have to say goodbye to Lucy, who will be returning to Glasgow to finish her degree.  Lucy did a fantastic job and even managed to find the causal polymorphism for blonde coat colouration in seals!   We wish her all the best of luck and hope to see her again.

Sadly, Hatice’s Erasmus exchange has come to an end.  We wish her a fond farewell and the best of luck for the future!

A big welcome to Hatice Gokalp, who will be spending two months in the lab as an Erasmus exhange student.  She will be working together with David Vendrami on the population genetics of European clams.

Meinolf Ottensmann has recently joined the lab to complete his masters project. He is looking at the relationship between Antarctic fur seal olfactory profiles and immune-related features of the genome. He is also a great birder and recently came first in the ‘Bielefeld Bird Race.’ Well done Meinolf!

A big welcome to Michele de Noia, who is joining the lab as an Early Stage Researcher on the CACHE project.

The Hoffman lab are one of this year’s recipients of the Floragenex 2016 RAD-Seq Processing Award.  We are grateful to Floragenex for supporting our work on heterozygosity and fitness in fur seals.

A big welcome to Stefanie Grosser, who is starting a DFG-funded postdoc with ourselves and Jochen Wolf’s lab.  Stefanie will be working on pinniped genomics with a particular focus on Galapagos sea lion speciation genomics.

An 18 month Early Stage Researcher position is available to work on marine population genomics in the Hoffman lab. The work is part of a Marie Curie Initial Training Network entitled CACHE (Calcium in a Changing Environment) and is coordinated by the British Antarctic Survey. The project provides an excellent opportunity for the candidate to obtain experience of diverse methodologies, from next generation sequencing to geometric morphometrics and scanning electron microscopy.

This position offers a generous stipend of at least €3700 per month, including a mobility allowance, with the possibility for fieldwork in Europe. Candidates are expected to have at least a BSc or equivalent and the deadline for applications is February 26th 2016. Please see the PDF for more details about the project and the application process.