Program

The meeting will be held from March 25 afternoon to March 27 morning

Preliminary program:

Day 1 Wednesday (25/03/2026)	Day 2 Thursday (26/03/2026)	Day 3 Friday (27/03/2026)
Arrival until 14.30 15.00 Invited talk 1 16.00 Poster session / Icebreaker with snacks	9.30 Invited talk 2 10.30 Student talks 1 11.30 Coffe break 11.50 Student talks 2 13.00 Lunch break 14.15 Student talks 3 15.15 Coffe break 15.45 Student talks 4 16.45 Workshop 18.45 End of day	9.30 Student talks 5 10.30 Coffe break 11.00 Awards + Closing 12.00 End of meeting

A more detailed program will follow in due time

 

Invited speakers:

Sophie Armitage Freie Universität Berlin	Dieter Ebert University of Basel
Sophie Armitage is a group leader at Freie Universität Berlin, where her lab works in the field of eco-evo-immunology, integrating ecological and evolutionary perspectives to understand immune defence strategies. She obtained her PhD at the University of Sheffield under the supervision of Mike Siva-Jothy and subsequently held postdoctoral positions at the University of Copenhagen and the University of Münster. From 2017 to 2023, she was a Heisenberg Fellow of the DFG, leading her own research group at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on variation in host immune defence, particularly the concepts of resistance and tolerance to pathogens. Using insects, especially Drosophila melanogaster, as model systems, her group investigates why some hosts suffer severe fitness costs upon infection while others can limit or tolerate these effects. Additional interests include the interaction between sex and immunity, as well as broader questions in evolutionary immunology.	Dieter Ebert is a professor of Zoology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Basel and a Permanent Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. He received his PhD at the University of Basel in the group of Stephan C. Stearns and subsequently held postdoctoral positions at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, the University of Oxford with W. D. Hamilton, and Imperial College London with John Lawton. His research focuses on fundamental evolutionary processes, particularly host–parasite coevolution, local adaptation, and evolution in changing environments. Using Daphnia and its parasites as a model system, his group combines field studies, laboratory experiments, experimental evolution, and genomic approaches to investigate phenotypic and genomic divergence across populations.