Mussa Quareshy, who is a 2012 cohort Warwick student, has just been awarded two travel grants in order to allow him to attend The International Plant Growth Substances Association 2016 meeting in Toronto.

The grants, awarded by the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Vegetable Research Trust (VRT), will enable Mussa to present his work on novel auxin herbicide discovery at the meeting.

Chris Morgan, 2012 Birmingham MIBTP student, was the winning entry into the University of Birmingham's Images of Research competition for postgraduate researchers, where PGRs are encouraged to summarise their research in a single image.

Chris entitled his image Feeding the world with plant science.  The following text accompanied the image:

As Earth’s population continues to grow, so too does the demand for sustainable food production. A large proportion of the UK’s plant science research is aimed at generating plants with new beneficial characteristics, such as increased drought tolerance or higher yield. Translating these beneficial characteristics to crop plants, such as wheat and maize, will help to address some of the problems associated with ensuring future global food security.

This image shows seedlings of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana germinating on an agar petri dish. We are using molecular biology to investigate how a special form of cell division called meiosis is controlled and regulated in Arabidopsis. By investigating meiosis we aim to understand how genetic material (DNA) is reshuffled and passed between parents and offspring in plants. We can then use this knowledge to inform and improve current plant breeding technologies, hopefully allowing plant breeders to generate novel crop varieties with desirable traits.

Matt Teft, a second year MIBTP (Midlands Integrative Biosciences Training Partnership) student, is part of a team that has won an award for Public Engagement at the University of Warwick Staff Awards.

The MIBTP is a BBSRC funded Doctoral Training Partnership between the Universities of Warwick, Birmingham and Leicester. As part of their training, the BBSRC requires students to complete a Professional Internship for Phd Students (PIPS). Matt participated in the University's activities at the Cheltenham Science Festival in June 2015 as part of his PIPS and has written a blog of his experience: blogs.warwick.ac.uk/mibtp/entry/cheltenham_science_festival

Matt is a PhD student with Dr Miriam Gifford in the School of Life Sciences working on a project entitled 'Investigating conservation of function of SCARECROW-LIKE/GRAS transcription factors and their interactions in controlling root architecture responses'.

Matt Teft, a second year MIBTP student, is part of a team that has been nominated for the Warwick University Staff Awards - in the Public Engagement Category. Matt participated in the University's activities at Cheltenham Science Festival as part of his PIPS. The awards evening is on March 11th so fingers crossed!

Claire Stoker is an author on a paper demonstraing that a plant hormone, jasmonate, drives time-of-day differences in susceptibility of Arabidopsis to the fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea.

The research, done in collaboration with the University of Cape Town, discovered that plants show different levels of susceptibility to B. cinerea when infected at different times of the day. When plants were infected in the morning they were less susceptible than when they were infected at night. This difference is driven by the circadian clock and relies on the jasmonic acid signalling pathway.

You can read the full paper here and watch a video about this research.

MIBTP student Michael McLeod wins October's Shell LiveWIRE Smarter Future Award for his business Universal Resource Trading. Universal Resource Trading provides an easy way for universities to recoup space, generate revenue and prevent waste of their unwanted equipment. Michael's business won £5000 start up funds and coaching from senior Shell business leaders. You can read more about Michael's business and watch his elevator pitch video here.

If you are interested in applying to the scheme - more details can be found on this page.

Nathaniel Davies, 2012 cohort, is one of the authors named on a new paper published on the CSH Press Genome Research website. The paper is entitled 'DNA methylation changes induced by long and short photoperiods in Nasonia' and can be viewed on the CSH Press website.

Richard Meek, of the 2013 MIBTP cohort, has recently had his first author publication in Plos Biology. The publication is a result of his PIPS placement, undertaken during his training year.

The article, entitled Nonmedical Uses of Antibiotics: Time to Restrict Their Use? was based on a 11,000 word report for the UK All Parliamentary Group on antibiotics, which Richard also first authored. This report can be viewed on the APPG website.

Nathaniel Davies (2012 cohort) has recently had his second, first author publication - this time in the BMC Evolutionary Biology Journal. The paper is entitled Analysis of 5’ gene regions reveals extraordinary conservation of novel non-coding sequences in a wide range of animals and can be viewed on the Biomedcentral website.

Two MIBTP students are part of a team who have reached the final of the Biotechnology YES competition.

Sian Baily - 2012 cohort, and Matthew Tridgett - 2014 cohort (who are both based at the University of Birmingham), along with their team members Julia Kraemer, Charles Moore-Kelly and Stephen Hall, achieved success in thier workshop and will advance to the finals, taking place in London on 10th December. Sian acted as Managing Director of the team, Matthew, Finance Director.

The Biotechnology Young Entrepreneurs Scheme (Biotechnology YES) is an innovative competition developed to raise awareness of the commercialisation of bioscience ideas among early career researchers. The competition, funded by sponsorship, aims to encourage an entrepreneurial culture for the benefit of the UK economy.

The winners of the Biotechnology YES competition receive £2,500 and an opportunity to attend the Rice Business Plan Competition. For more information on the competition, please see the Biotechnology Yes website.

Nathaniel Davies, of the first MIBTP intake of students, has just had his first author publication in the Oxford Journals Database, The Journal of Biological Databases and Curation. The paper, entitled WaspAtlas: a Nasonia vitripennis gene database and analysis platform, can be viewed on the website

Elise Facer-Childs, 2013 MIBTP student, is first author on a publication in Frontiers in Neurology demontrating that individual's circadian phenotypes are a good predictor for team performance. Reada the article here.

Maura di Martino, a second year MIBTP student, worked with the Global Plant Council for her PIPS. Part of this involved translating plant science lectures for the Gatsby Summer School program as part of their educational outreach. These lectures are on cutting-edge plant science research and available here.

2013 cohort student, Lauren Jones, has just been published as first author for her paper, entitled, Neurochemical measurements in the zebrafish brain.

The paper was published on the online journal, Frontiers in Behavioural Neuroscience and can be viewed on their website