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Inclusion, diversity and social sustainability at meetings

11 June 2024

Sustainable practices are often seen as actions that minimise environmental impact. According to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed by the UN, sustainable practices include themes such as environmental protection, the fight against poverty, inclusion, and collaboration.

While many of our blogs explore tips on how to minimise the environmental impact of events, in this blog we will talk about the social aspects of sustainability and how to approach them when organising a conference.

Going belowground: exploring the protective role of isoprene in plant roots at the Sharkey lab

26 March 2024

Manuel Bellucci in the lab

Isoprene is a biogenic volatile compound emitted by many different plants. Above ground, this compound protects plants from a range of abiotic and biotic stresses. But what happens belowground is less clear and it is this question that fascinated Manuel Bellucci, a PhD student in the Department of Science and Technology for Sustainable Development and the Campus Bio-Medico of the University of Rome (Italy).

Our plans for sustainable Workshops in 2024

29 January 2024

As we all continue to manage the challenges of global warming and biodiversity loss, it is important that the events industry embraces new and emerging technologies to play our part in contributing in the fight against climate change.

Last year, The Company of Biologists reinforced our commitment to making our Workshops more sustainable. We are now looking forward to our 2024 Workshop programme and will continue to implement all we have learned last year, as well as explore new ideas that can help mitigate the impact of our events.

Uniting researchers working with unconventional experimental organisms – Development Journal Meeting 2023 

9 January 2024

Development’s Journal Meeting, Unconventional and Emerging Experimental Organisms in Cell and Developmental Biology, took place from 17 to 20 September 2023 at the beautiful Wotton House in Surrey, UK. 

In the opening remarks of the Meeting, Katherine Brown, the Executive Editor of Development, made the case for the developmental biology field to expand their horizons. Traditional models like flies, mice, and fish, while invaluable, are not the be-all and end-all of developmental biology. The need for diversity in the study of life’s fundamental processes has become strikingly clear in recent years.  

Choosing sustainable venues: a guide

28 November 2023

Accommodation and catering often has the second highest environmental impact of an event after transportation 1 2 3 and so choosing a sustainable venue for your event can make a big difference in your environmental impact. Venues are increasingly transparent about their sustainability measures and commitments, and information can be found on their website or by speaking with staff.

So what are the key factors to consider when looking for a sustainable venue?

Sustainable menus at events: nurturing with less impact (part 2)

11 April 2024

At any event food is an integral part of your attendees’ experience. However, managing the impact of food choices is not straightforward in terms of sustainability. In this blog, we look at some more tips to help make the menus at your upcoming events more sustainable. In case you missed it, check out part 1 of this guide.

Fund for Innovations in Sustainable Conferencing – new name, but same support

7 March 2024

We are delighted to see that the biology community has been showing their natural creativity by experimenting with different conference models  (Lowell et al. 2022) and we have been very pleased to support some of these experiments with funding through our Sustainable Conferencing Grants.

 

A visit to The Forest of Biologists

18 January 2024

Our Publisher Claire Moulton recently visited the two Woodland Trust UK sites where we are planting new native trees for published Research and Review papers and protecting ancient woodland on behalf of our peer reviewers.

Workshops in 2023: our sustainability journey

20 December 2023 

It is known that some organised events can create up to 2400 metric tonnes of CO2/eq, which has a significant impact in accelerating global warming. Every step taken to decrease the carbon impact of the event industry counts in the fight against climate change, and this is something which The Company of Biologists feels strongly about.

This year, we reinforced our commitment to decrease the carbon footprint of our scientific Workshops, working hard to implement new sustainable strategies during the organisation and implementation of our events.

We are excited to share with you some of our achievements from 2023 in tackling the carbon footprint of multiple aspects of our Workshops:

Microtubule cryo-EM at Technische Universität Dresden

24 October 2023

Dr Thomas Mueller-Reichert’s lab at the Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) in Germany

The mitotic spindle is crucial for proper chromosome segregation during cell division. Chromosome segregation takes place in anaphase and previous work has shown that the speed of this process depends on the structure of the spindle. Yitong Xu is a graduate student in Stefano Di Talia’s lab at Duke University, where she studies mitosis and microtubule dynamics in Drosophila melanogaster embryos. Yitong recently used a Travelling Fellowship from Journal of Cell Science to visit Dr Thomas Mueller-Reichert’s lab at the Technische Universität Dresden (TUD) in Germany, to conduct cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) observations of the Drosophila spindle.

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