Advances in Coccolithophore Research 2025

Coccolithophores have been the subject of intense research over the last three decades for a good reason. This calcifying marine phytoplankton group plays a unique and crucial role in marine biogeochemical cycles and supports marine ecosystem functions essential to ocean health, resilience, and ocean-climate interactions.

The Advances in Coccolithophore Research meeting aims to bring together international early career and established coccolithophore scientists to:

• discuss the current state-of-the-art in coccolithophore research and develop future research ideas,
• foster collaboration and exchange ideas within our community to build and strengthen professional networks.

However your research connects to coccolithophores - productivity, calcification, cell biology, diversity, ecology, biogeochemistry, evolution... - we hope that you'll join us for three days of coccolithophore fun!

Meeting Programme:

The meeting is organised around four key thematic areas, each of which has a designated session and ample time for discussion:

Biogeochemistry - What is the role of coccolithophores in the marine carbon cycle and nutrient cycling? What are the potential consequences of ocean change on these core ecosystem functions?

Cell Biology - What do we learn about coccolithophore biology through -omics, genetics, molecular processes and cellular physiology?

Climate Change - How does coccolithophore physiology, ecology and biogeography respond to complex environmental variability over a range of timescales?

Ecosystems - What is the role of coccolithophores in ecosystem processes, and what are the ecological interactions between coccolithophores and other plankton groups, microbes, viruses and other trophic levels?

Confirmed speakers:

Plenary:

Colin Brownlee (Marine Biological Association)

Biogeochemistry:

Blanca Ausin (Universidad de Salamanca)

Griet Neukermans (Ghent University)

Alba Gonzalez-Lanchas (University of Oxford)

Cell Biology:

Andre Scheffel (Max Plank Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology)

Assaf Vardi (Weizmann Institute of Science)

Climate Change:

Rosalind Rickaby (University of Oxford)

Hongrui Zhang (Tongji University)

Ecosystems:

Catarina V. Guerreiro (University of Lisbon)

Boris Karatsolis (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

Registration:

This is a hybrid meeting hosted at The Marine Biological Association, Plymouth (UK). Due to the interactive nature of the workshop and limited capacity of the venue, in-person registration is limited to 40 tickets and registration for attending in-person cost £60 for students and £120 for non-students. The fee will be used to cover catering during the event. In-person tickets will be first come, first served, so if you'd like to attend in-person please register as soon as possible (once the registration opens). Online participation is free.

In addition to confirmed speakers, we will select additional session speakers from registered attendees whose research complements the session theme and the other speakers. In order to identify additional speakers and to aid in networking, we ask all participants to submit during their registration a brief (~100 words) synopsis of their current relevant research interests (not a formal abstract), which session best fits their research, and whether they would like to be considered as a session speaker. These synopses will be compiled and shared with registered participants before the meeting.

In addition to the hybrid talks this year we will have an in-person poster session. If you would like to present your poster, we ask that you let us know during registration so we know the number of poster boards required.

We will design the programme with sessions across the morning, afternoon and evening so that you should be able to join for some or all of the meeting wherever you are in the world! The final schedule will be shared closer to the event.

Meeting Details

Host: This is a hybrid meeting hosted at The Marine Biological Association, Plymouth (UK)

Organisers: Dr. Glen Wheeler (Marine Biological Association), Dr. Jelena Godrijan (Rudjer Boskovic Institute), Nishant Chauhan(University of Cambridge), Dr. Nicola Wiseman (University of Bristol), Assaf Gal (Weizmann Institute of Science),Deborah Tangunan (University College London), Dr. Joost de Vries (University of Bristol), Dr. Kyle Mayers (NORCE).

We hope that this makes the meeting as accessible as possible for everyone and we look forward to meeting you in Plymouth or online in September!

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