Young ISDR newsletter: 2018 updates and looking forward

Welcome to the early career section of the International Society for Diatom Research, the Young ISDR. We would like to give you an overview of all the activities the Young ISDR initiated or were involved with during 2018 and update you on all the exciting upcoming initiatives planned for 2019. We would also like to invite you to contribute to and support these community-effort initiatives. By doing so, we can ensure that the Young ISDR community remains relevant, strong and successful for the diatom scientific community.

A brief overview of initiatives and events during 2018

The 25th International Diatom Symposium

During June 2018, the 25th International Diatom Symposium was held at the Seminaris & Botanical Garden, Berlin, Germany. The Young ISDR organized a Speedtalk session, which was very well-received by all attendants. The session provided everyone with great laughter but also gave young scientists an opportunity to showcase their creativity. The Young ISDR also arranged an informal get-together for early-career diatomists to facilitate networking and by doing so, providing a platform for them to get to know each other better. The conference saw, for the first time, a post-conference workshop day for the early-career community to support more intimate learning opportunities from experienced ISDR members. Several early-career diatomists attended these workshops and it was a great opportunity during which we all enhanced our knowledge and skills.

Four post-conference workshops were initiated by the Young ISDR with support from fellow ISDR researchers:

• Ecology and Biomonitoring - by Prof. Maria Kahlert & Dr. Rosa Trobajo 
• How to publish a paper - by Dr. Eileen Cox 
• Palaeoecology - by Prof. Susan McGowan 
• DNA-taxonomy - by Prof. David G. Mann & Dr. Teofil Nakov

The Young ISDR group successfully elected a new Early Career Representative (ECR), as ordered by the statutes. Dr. Andrea Burfeid Castellanos (University of Barcelona/Alfred-Wegener Institute, Bremerhaven) was elected as new incoming ECR with Ms. Hannah Hartung (University of Bonn) who is the outgoing ECR in 2020. Dr. Xavier Benito (SESYNC, University of Maryland) continued to extend his support as one of the Young ISDR coordinators. New members to join the Young ISDR core team are: Dr. Chetan Gaonkar (Texas A&M University), Dr. Mia Otto (University of the Free State, South Africa, now residing in Canada) and Mr. Anrich Kock (North-West University South Africa).

The Young ISDR community out on an informal get-together excursion during IDS 2018, organized by the Young ISDR Core Team 2018.

The Diatom of the Month series

A key objective of Young ISDR  is to communicate diatom science to a wider audience through a wide variety of outreach platforms. One such platform is the “Diatom of the Month” blog, co-edited by  Dr. Luca Marazzi and Dr. Xavier Benito. In the meantime, more than 40 young diatomists and mid-career researchers wrote a research blog about their work, thereby enlightening the diatom community on their on-going research and activities. We invite members of our community to contribute to the blog and utilize this platform to share views and experiences with relevance for a broad audience and the general public. The DOM is transitioning to a new editorial commitee to broaden the number of diatom research topics and increase impact - stay tuned! In the meantime, if you are willing to make a contribution, please contact Luca Marazzi and Xavier Benito.

During 2018 the blog had contributions from a wide variety of researchers from around the world. Below is a list of the blog contributions posted with the authors and a direct link to the articles:

• January 2018 - South American diatoms written by Xavier Benito

• February 2018 -  Aulacoseira baicalensis written by Dr. Sarah Roberts

• March 2018 - Afrocymbella barkeri written by Dr. Heather Moorhouse

• April 2018 - Diatoma tenius written by Ms. Mira Tammelin

• May 2018 - Coscinodiscus granii written by Dr. Johannes W. Goessling

• June 2018 - Achnanthes felinophila written by Dr. Rex Lowe

• July 2018 - Ecological uniqueness written by Dr. Annika Vilmi

• August 2018 - Diatoms and Okavango River written by Dr. Mia Otto
  

• September 2018 - Diatoms at aquatic ecology conferences written by Dr. Annika Vilmi, Dr. Luca Marazzi and Dr. Xavier Benito

• October 2018 - Discostella stelligera written by Dr. Antonia Law

• November 2018 - Diatoms of North America written by Dr. Luca Marazzi, Dr. Xavier Benito, Dr. Sylvia Lee and Dr. Sarah Spaulding

• December 2018 - Pantocsekiella ocellata complex written by Ms. Melina Feitl

The Hidden World of Diatoms

The Young ISDR extended its support by participating in a children‘s book and webpage: “The hidden world of diatoms”, authored by Dr. Emanuela Samaritani. This is not just a book for education, but serves as a tool to inspire children’s curiosity and interest in organisms not visible to the naked eye. The hidden world of diatoms is the first book in a planned series about microorganisms. Several diatomists from the Young ISDR community generously contributed their LM and SEM images of several diatom species to support the development of this book. Their contributing images can be viewed on the website by clicking here.

The book was recently published and contains beautiful illustrations by Ms. Helena Kreissel. To order your copy or for more information on the book please follow this link.

Conferences and meetings

Since the beginning of Young ISDR, our core team members attended the following conferences in 2017/2018 and presented our activities with poster and talks: 

• Central European Diatom Meeting, Prague (2017)
• Iberian Cryptogamic Symposium, Aranjuez (2017)
• International Phycological Congress, Szczecin (2017)
• British Diatom Meeting, North Yorkshire (2017)
• IPA-IAL Meeting, Stockholm (2018)
• International Diatom Symposium, Berlin (2018) 
• GeoBonn in Bonn (2018)

Young ISDR is planning to present a poster at the upcoming INQUA Congress in July 2019 in Dublin and at the North American Diatom Symposium, Georgia, August 2019.

Hannah Hartung representing Young ISDR at the British Diatom Meeting, North Yorkshire (left) and IPA-IAL conference, Stockholm (right)

New ISDR Logo Design

The ISDR council agreed during the IDS in Berlin, that the society’s logo is in need of updating. The Young ISDR took the initiative to organize a logo competition. The competition ran from September 2018 to February 2019 and a total of 14 authentic designs were received from a wide variety of members (including several designs from Young diatomists) of the ISDR. This was followed by an anonymous voting process, during which all ISDR members were invited to vote for their favorite design. Voting has officially closed and the result will be announced soon.

The designer of the winning logo can select one of the following two prizes:

• Free participation sponsorship (registration-fee is covered) for the upcoming  IDS 2020 in Yamagata (Japan)
•  A 2-year subscription to the society’s journal, “Diatom Research”.

Upcoming and planned initiatives for 2019

The year 2019 promises to be another exciting year for the Young ISDR community and one in which we intend to continue building on the success of the previous years. It is under the leadership of Ms. Hannah Hartung, to a great extent, that the community was able to build its strength and voice within the larger diatom society and community. Her enthusiasm and passion for the Young ISDR ensured that great things were accomplished in the past few years. With the election of Dr. Andrea Burfeid Castellanos as the new incoming ECR (in full capacity only by IDS 2020) we are excited to see a smooth transition between leadership happening within the Young ISDR Core Team. We are dedicated to not let previous hard work go to waste, and we are excited to continue building on the time and work invested in building this community. It is, however, up to the entire community to contribute and engage and we are very excited to be able to tell you about upcoming planned initiatives and events. Therefore, we invite you to participate and engage as much as you can or feel comfortable. While we facilitate and coordinate, we do need every member to strengthen connections among community members!

International Diatom Symposium 2020

We are already developing activities and events for the next IDS 2020 in Yamagata (Japan). Among these, the third installment of the popular Speedtalk session and associated prizes for this session’s winners are being organized. We are also in the process of negotiations with Koeltz Botanical Books publishers for prize sponsoring. We would like to see the Young ISDR post-symposium workshops return after the success and positive feedback received after the IDS 2018 event. Therefore, if you have any suggestions on topics that you would like to see highlighted during these workshops, please feel free to get in touch with us. We want to see these workshops tender to the needs of the community, and therefore your input is essential to achieve this.

Life with diatoms

We all ended up working with diatoms for various reasons or opportunities that may have crossed our paths. Was it out of enthusiasm, curiosity or love towards working with microscopic organisms which lead you to work with them? We would like to present you all with an opportunity to tell your personal story on how you got into diatoms. We are trying to create a cohesive networking platform, which will enable us to get to know each other better. We invite you to share your story with us and by doing so connecting with other diatomists working in all the diverse aquatic habitats around the world. We don’t always have ample opportunities to network, but it is envisioned that this platform will help facilitate to do so. It is a good way to introduce yourself to the diatom community, and also, meet other members of this community. This piece on your personal story does not need to be too formal. Get in contact with us about your writing idea on how you got into diatoms!

Pioneering women in diatomology

It is all too often that we only really read and get to know about diatomists when they are no longer with us. In this series, we aim to capture the stories of early female diatomists. Some, we are too late to capture directly from their own pens, but for others it is not too late. It would be a shame if these women are not offered an opportunity to tell their stories in their own words. While it may seem easy to be working in the field of diatoms today, and science for that matter, women did not always have the equal opportunity taken for granted by so many of us today. These women overcame tremendous odds to become the successful pioneers they are. Often, without the privilege of formal education and training and only equipped with an interest to learn, passion to explore and love for the field of diatomology. There is great worth in learning about these women, and it is with almost some urgency that we plan to set out on a mission to capture the stories of pioneering women in diatomology. Dr. Mia Otto will start this series of interviews with eminent researchers and technicians who devoted their life to diatomology. If you have any women working, or having worked when they were younger, in diatomology that you would like to nominate for this list of potential interviewees please contact Dr. Otto directly by clicking on this link.

Meet the ISDR Council

It is important for us, that early-career diatomists get to know more senior scientists, in order to make them more approachable at congresses and other meetings. Since the start of our blog, we have tried to do so by asking members of the ISDR Council to present themselves, how they got into diatoms and into the society. We are far from done! We will continue to blog their stories to introduce you to these important diatomists.

After a year-gap, we have restarted this section presenting our freshly-baked vice-president, Dr. Rosa Trobajo from IRTA (Sant Carles de la Rapita, Spain). Read all of our “Meet the Council” posts here.

Young ISDR Blog

The Young ISDR blog is currently under construction!

We are working hard on redesigning the blog page and also making it more user-friendly. We are constantly trying to provide the community with updated information about funding opportunities, jobs, workshops, and congresses. But we need more volunteers to provide information for this platform. If you are an experienced blogger please volunteer for this job! But if you are not, we still need a lot of assistance with content so please get in touch if you are willing to help us!!!

The new blog has several new functionalities which are aimed at simplifying different tasks and enhancing overall management. The site also has multiple pages containing information on the various activities of Young ISDR. These include: Diatom jobs, funding opportunities, publication pages and much more. This will ensure that specific information is more easily found on the site and that the overall user experience is more streamlined. Below is an outline of the new site’s pages and what you can expect to find under each section:

Diatom Jobs: 
A page where you can find information on jobs related to diatoms. While we work hard to keep an eye out for possible opportunities, we do request that diatomists of all ages and career stages update us with any job information that may come to your attention to ensure that we post as much information on jobs as possible. Please send the information to us via email so we can share these opportunities with the community.

Funding opportunities:  
A page where you can obtain information related to several research grants and travel awards. If you are aware of any such opportunities feel free to send us an email.

Publications: 
For the new blog site we have decided to separate the publication page as an independent section. This way the page will serve as a platform for all new publications, related to diatoms, to be shared with the community. It is our vision that this page will help boost the visibility and impact of your work.

All members are invited to send us information on their recent publications related to diatoms in an email. We consider the copyrights of the journals; therefore we request you only provide us with the Title, Authors, Abstract and the DOI, in order not to violate any copyright. We hope that you will utilize this great opportunity to make your work visible and available to the young ISDR and larger international diatom community.

Diatom of the month: 
This page is reserved for researchers who volunteer to write a blog entry on species or topics related to their diatom work and written in a language accessible for the general public. The blog is called the “Diatom of the Month” which is co-edited by Dr. Luca Marazzi and Dr. Xavier Benito and hosted on the Young ISDR blog site. The blog is aimed at creating a platform of communication among taxonomists, ecologists, biologists to raise awareness about the importance and implications of diatoms for a broad audience, including decision makers and the general public. For this reason, we invite all researchers of varying levels to contribute to the Diatom of the Month blog. It is our hope that we can use this space to learn from one another’s work, motivate and inspire in order to strengthen the connectedness in our IDSR community. So please get in touch with Dr. Luca Marazzi and Dr. Xavier Benito so we can help you share and showcase your current or most recent work.

Networking projects for early-career researchers:

This page aimed at creating an interface in the form of a forum, to share questions and/or get help with identifications. It also makes it possible to follow early-career diatomists in different social networks with one click. Keep an eye out for this one!

Early Career Research (ECR) central: 
The new blog site will incorporate a link called the Early Career Research (ECR) central, where you can find information on job advertisements and vacancies. This site does not exclusively host diatom jobs but rather a much wider field of work. The website centralizes global funding opportunities (also listed per country), job opportunities and travel grants. It is a platform for networking and sharing protocols and useful resources with other scientists. Go check it out!

The ISDR is currently working on a brand-new website, which will include the information provided by the Young ISDR blog once it’s finally set up. The new website hopefully might be launched before the end of this year. We need pictures to feed its content visually: sampling diatoms in the field, preparing diatoms in the lab, diatoms pictures etc. There will be a separate announcement about this soon. If you are interested, please start looking for pictures. Of course, we will credit the person who provided the picture. If you have any suggestions or specific requests and recommendations please do get in touch with us!

 

Connect with us and stay tuned via all our communication and social media outlets for all these and more enthusiastic projects to come:

Twitter: @young_ISDR

Facebook: Diatomi discipuli

Instagram: youngisdr

email: youngdiatomists@gmail.com

Google groups forum: youngdiatomists@googlegroups.com

For any questions and suggestions, please don’t hesitate to drop us a line. We love hearing from you!