Happy 2024, everyone!

Let’s start the year off with some job opportunities:

• A postdoc in the chemistry of oat-Fusarium interactions is available in Nanna Bjarnholt’s lab at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark (deadline to apply – January 7th),
• A PhD position in genomics research on oats, focussing on broadening the genetic base for future oat breeding, is available in Morten Lillemo’s lab at the Norwegian University of life sciences (deadline to apply – January 20th), and
• Postdoc and PhD student positions in plant transformation and gene editing are available in Jaswinder Singh’s lab at McGill University, Canada.

Jaswinder comments on the new gene editing regulations in Canada in this article. One of his current PhD students, Mehtab Singh, recently won the 2023 Lister Family Engaged Science 3-Minute Thesis Competition held at McGill University. His presentation appears about 15 minutes into this video. Congratulations, Mehtab!

Another opportunity, this time for funding, is being advertised by NKJ, which wants to facilitate collaboration between researchers in the Nordic countries. To be eligible for funding, groups must include partners from at least three Nordic countries. The deadline to apply is January 31st.

Opportunities such as the ones above tend to be advertised first via OatMail, on the Oat Newsletter ‘X’ account, or in the (usually) Weekly Web Harvest posts.

Don’t forget to check out the events advertised as well! As mentioned in the last newsletter update, the American Oat Workers’ Conference (AOWC) will take place in Saskatoon, Canada, this year, from July 21st-24th. The draft program can be accessed here, and abstracts can be submitted now. Registration will open soon.

I would expect that the Prairie Oat Growers Association will play a large role in the AOWC meeting! Their latest "Oat Scoop" newsletter is available here.

The last Oat Newsletter update also included links to information concerning the 1st CROPDIVA Symposium, which was held in Ghent, Belgium, in early December. An article summarizing the event can be found here, and a video was made as well. The proceedings have not been posted, but the program lists all of the speakers and their presentations. One of the speakers, PhD student Todd Jenkins, recently had his first peer-reviewed article as a first author published. The work looks at the evidence for ecosystem service provision and economic value of underutilised crops, including oats. Congratulations, Todd!

Cheers to a fabulous 2024!

(Steffen Beuch, Matthias Herrmann, and Selma Schurack enjoy a beverage after a long day of meetings in Ghent.)