Outreach

Théo and Margret paid a visit to the Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food and Environment where they presented the results of their work on the global trade in orchids based on CITES data. It was an excellent opportunity to close the gap between research and policy.

Stephen shows us that plants are pretty magnificent. Exotic and compelling stories come to life when exploring century-old plant collections. Stephen is studying the tiny plant Euphrasia, a fascinating hemiparasite found all over the globe. It is all part of exploring diversity and the natural world around us.

Nataly is passionated about gin and tonic but not only because it is a delicious drink. The compound that makes the drink bitter is quinine and it is found in the bark of the Cinchona tree, the national tree of Peru. Quinine is used to cure malaria and it has saved more lives in human history than any other remedy. Nataly's research is about the evolutionary history, the chemical diversity, and the biodiversity patterns of the Cinchona trees.

Anne-Sophie participated in an event of the Gothenburg Global Biodiversity Center in which she talked about why she decided to pursue a life in science and why biodiversity is cool.

Physilia wrote a beautiful poem about her capercaillies. Read it here!

Bastien did so well last time high school students visited the labs at CERTH that they decided to do it again! This time he teamed up with Laura, an ESR of the ITN Cosmic, and they shared their experiences of being part of a MSCA project. (pictures)

On 31 January, Marcel participated in a meeting of the Dutch Palynological Association and he talked about software-automated pollen recognition.

Bastien gave a tour of the CERTH labs to some high school students and they talked about DNA extractions, gel electrophoresis, nanodrop, PCR, ... It is important to get the next generation excited for biodiversity research! (pictures)

Maurizio has a small interview on the EURAXESS website. You can read it here.

Physilia visited some exciting places around the globe during 2018 and she shares her adventures in this video!

The Dutch version of the popular science journal New Scientist made a special issue about the Naturalis Biodiversity Center and together with some other PhD students, Marcel was given the opportunity to showcase his research. (Link to the full edition)

Original outreach alert! Feli was interviewed during the talkshow "Ugress" on radiOrakel fm 99.3 and they discussed Angelica sinensis and herbal remedies. You can listen to the entire interview on this website.

On Friday 28 September, Bastien participated in the Researchers' Night in Thessaloniki, Greece. We heard it was a huge success and there was much interest for his project. You can find some pictures on our Facebook page.

In late September, the BioDATA project held its kick-off meeting at the Natural History Museum in Oslo and Brecht showed the participants how great Plant.ID is.

Titan, the online newspaper of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science at the University of Oslo, wrote an interesting article about Plant.ID and plant DNA barcoding. Find the article here.

How can you identify a plant when you only have a leaf? Yannick and Olwen give you the answer in their Kew Science Blog.

Hugo visited the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Gothenburg for a second time and shared our Plant.ID project. Repetition is the mother of learning.

Hugo visited the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Gothenburg and presented Plant.ID to the researchers there.

Every year, the PET group at the Natural History Museum, University of Oslo has a share-and-support retreat in Rondane. Brecht presented our Plant.ID network to the group members.

From 12 to 14 February, Hugo and Brecht participated in the ForBio Annual Meeting 2018 in Tromsø, Norway where they presented Plant.ID to the ForBio community.