By Katie Lotterhos

Despite the pandemic, we’ve been busy in the last year! Highlights include:

  • Funding 5 new working groups, for a total of 11 active working groups. If you haven’t yet, check out the seminars and panel discussions from the Temporal Genomics and MarineOmics working groups.
  • Professional Development Exchanges. In 2020, we funded 12 professional development exchanges for graduate students or postdocs. Many of these have been delayed due to the pandemic, but we have been corresponding with awardees and many of them have indicated that they will be able to complete their exchange this year.
  • Establishment of a Virtual Lab Training Program by the RCN Diversity Committee. We had 34 mentees (including some international students) participate across 32 labs nationwide. We will be expanding this program in the coming year!
  • A semester of Coordinated Readings on Conservation Genomics, with 160 people from dozens of labs around the world participating on our Slack Channel. We are organizing a set of coordinated readings for Spring 2022.
  • Development of a 2021 Special Feature on “Evolving Seas” in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. We currently have 8 papers accepted or revision for this special issue, 4 of which originated from RCN working groups.