International Research Training Group 2172 - PRoTECT
A better understanding of how plants interact with their biotic environment will lead to improved and environmentally friendly crop protection strategies to fend off pathogen and insect threats and support sustainable agriculture. The International Research Training Group 2172 is a collaborative program between research groups of Goettingen University and of the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver is working on this topic in an interdisciplinary way.The very active research field of plant-microbe/insect interaction can help to ensure food security for the global community in a sustainable manner. IRTG 2172 PRoTECT aims to elucidate defense mechanisms that are operational in different cellular and extracellular compartments of model and crop plants by focussing on the following interconnected aspects of plant pathogen interactions: Barriers, metabolites and signal transduction. Involved research areas are biochemistry, molecular biology, microbiology, and genetics.
The IRTG provides intense scientific guidance together with an excellent experimental infrastructure for successful PhD projects. Moreover, the program exposes the doctoral researchers to many cutting-edge methods that can be combined with obligatory offers that meet with their individual needs in graduate training. This PhD training program provides international experience to the doctoral researchers who also spend part of their PhD thesis in Canada. The qualification program consists of seminars, methodology workshops, soft-skill courses, teaching obligations, excursions, and a self-organised international symposium.
The homepage of the program can be found here.
The final cohort of the program will start their PhDs in summer of 2022 - applications are no longer possible.