This included PhD students Sabrina Schultze, Silje Kristiansen, Julie Sørlie Paus-Knudsen, Torben Lode and Daniel Hitchcock, and Prof. Katrine Borgå. The Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) is a society where academia, regulators and industry meet to discuss science. The society hosts conferences on five continents and we attended the one in Europe. This year the conference had up to 2,000 participants, ten parallel sessions and hundreds of new posters each day.
The theme for SETAC 2018 was «Responsible and Innovative Research for Environmental Quality». Each track for the parallel sessions included between 10-20 sessions with both oral presentation and poster presentations. The session rooms were located close to each other, so it was easy to jump between talks to keep up with all the interesting topics.
Daniel held a 12-minute presentation on his work with barnacle geese, examining how migration affect their accumulation of pollutants. Some of us signed up for the Young Scientist Award, where each poster and talk are judged on its content, delivery, visual aids and response to questions. Daniel did really well for his presentation and received a high score of 56/60! He is soon finishing his PhD and we are excited to see if he stays nearby or migrates further.
Torben, Sabrina, Julie and Silje presented their research with posters, and Katrine presented the work of a former Master student, Hilde Karin Midthaug. Julie, Katrine and Silje also had a 4-minute spotlight; an oral presentation where they gave a short summary of their research findings and encouraged the audience to visit their posters.
Torben presented his work on multiple stressors (copper and predation risk) on copepods, and Sabrina presented the effect of terrestrial dissolved organic matter on river and marine food webs. Hilde’s poster was about pollutants in an Antarctic avian top predator. Silje presented her findings from her Master thesis - the transport of pollutants by seabirds to tundra environments in the Arctic. Julie had to constantly juggle multiple people as the interest was through the roof for her research on bumble bees and neurotoxic effects of pesticides.
SETAC and conferences in general provide a great opportunity to meet up with international colleagues within the research field and discuss future collaboration and exchange research ideas and tips. The European conference in 2019 will be held in Helsinki and Katrine Borgå will be on the Scientific Committee.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
