A special thank you to our advisory board members Shana Goffredi (Occidental College, LA, USA) and Andreas Schramm (Aarhus University, Denmark) for your exciting and inspiring talks on deep sea symbioses and the microbiome of social spiders, respectively! Together with the great student contributions, the program illustrated the diversity and fascination of symbioses research. In addition to the scientific part, the event had a special focus on promoting interactions in the time of physical distancing. Lively introduction rounds as well as a discussion of the PhD students about their ideas and expectations for the doctoral program ensured everybody got to know each other better. Thanks to all participants for your contributions – you made the event a great success!

The FWF funded PhD program is part of the new Doctoral School in Microbiology and Environmental Sciences at the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science.