Welcome!

This is the homepage of the Plants and People Conferences.

Plants and People (P&P) Conferences are organised by the PhD students at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam-Golm and occur every second year.

Our conferences aim to bring together a unique mixture of high-profile international speakers, to speak not only on their specific research within the plant science field, but also to discuss wider aspects of life and growth within the scientific research world.

After the 5th Conference in 2019, Plants and People took a break in 2021 due to the pandemic. We are happy that we could hold our conference again in 2023.

Our theme for the 6th Plants and People Conference was ‘Exploring Plan(t)s’. P&P23 took place on September 6th and 7th, 2023. We brought together a diverse collection of international speakers from both academic and non-academic fields of plant science. The academic aspect of the conference featured talks on a multitude of subjects in plant biology including photosynthesis, epigenetics, plant-microbe interactions, and metabolomics. Speakers from non-academic fields gave us a glimpse of how they chose their career path and the nature of their current position.

We were joined by junior and senior researchers from near and afar who shared their science with us.

A warm THANK YOU! to everyone who joined and made P&P23 such a memorable event.

 

Watch this space for updates on Plants and People!

Until the next conference, you can find our 2023 programme on this website.

 

Previous Plants and People conferences were

2019: '(M)PIMP Future Foods - Challenges for Global Food Security' aimed to give us insights into scientific and social aspects of future challenges with regard to food security.
2017: 'Communicating Science - Connecting Worlds' focused on the communication and dissemination of scientific knowledge, not only to scientists but also to non-experts.
2015: 'Future Plan[t]s' brought together academic researchers and industry professionals to discuss their science and career paths.
2013: 'Challenges in Biology- Big Data and Ethics' focused on advances in biology and addressed ethical challenges that we as scientists have to consider.
2011 (inaugural conference): 'On Roots and Fruits of Plant Biology' looked into the history and present day applications of plant research.

 

Much of our financial support comes from the Max Planck Society, within the funding for the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Molecular Plant Science, with additional contributions by sponsors.

We thank the following companies for supporting our 2023 conference: