The Summer School will take place at SIAF, an International School of Advanced Education recently established by the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa and the Foundation of the Cassa di Risparmio di Volterra. SIAF is located in Volterra, 60km south-east of the Italian city of Pisa, in the heart of the Tuscany countryside.

Lecturers

• Camilla Moonen (local organisation), Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy
• Jean-Noël Aubertot (coordinator), INRA, France
• Daniel Wallach, INRA, France
• François Brun, ACTA, France
• Til Feike, Julius Kuhn Institute, Germany
• Mark Szalai, Szent Istvan University, Hungary
• Jay-Ram Lamichhane, INRA, France

Guest lecturer Katia Laval. Copyright: LMD.

Aims and rationale

The objective of the Fifth ENDURE Summer School is to make PhD students meet scientists who are actively implementing modelling approaches to develop IPM strategies able to take into account future climate. Climate change, through its effect on temperature, rainfall and atmospheric CO2 concentration, will impact many agricultural production situations worldwide. In addition to direct impact on yield, climate change will also affect biocenosis dynamics. In particular, pest (plant pathogens, animal pests and weeds) and beneficial dynamics will be affected and lead to new injury profiles and associated quantitative and qualitative damage to crop production. Given the complexity of the crop-soil-atmosphere-pest-auxiliary system, modelling is a key scientific approach to help design future cropping systems more resilient to biotic stress, with limited reliance on pesticides.

Programme

The Summer School programme will include (1) lectures given by internationally-renowned experts (guest lecturer Prof. Katia Laval, Emeritus Professor at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris), (2) team work to facilitate active participation of the selected PhD students and their interaction with the lecturers and (3) opportunities during the whole week for students to discuss individually with the lecturers about their PhD project or related questions. We recommend that participant have at least basic experience with ‘R’. 

The teaching objectives are to:

• Present up-to-date knowledge on climate change and its impact on pest and beneficial dynamics.
• Present the conceptual and methodological principles of various modelling approaches.
• Illustrate how modelling can be used to help design IPM strategies for future climate
• Give hands-on experience in a class modelling project that will test IPM strategies under climate change.

Provisional programme

Applications

Please send to Camilla Moonen:

• Short CV (maximum two A4 pages, Times New Roman 12 pt): Please indicate your level of experience with R
• Summary of PhD Project (maximum one A4 page, Times New Roman 12 pt)
• A motivation letter (maximum one A4 page, Times New Roman 12 pt)

Costs

Participation cost to the summer school is €750, and includes housing, meals, access to the lecture room, daily coffee breaks, and a guided tour of Volterra on Wednesday afternoon. The cost is reduced with respect to the actual cost of participation thanks to co-financing by ENDURE partners, which covers the participation of lecturers. Travel is not included, except for the bus from Pisa airport to SIAF-Volterra on Sunday evening and back again on Friday afternoon. 

Arrival and departure 

• 9 October 2016 around 17.00 (to be decided based on travel schemes of participants): meeting at Pisa Airport and departure by bus to SIAF, Volterra.
• 14 October 2016 around 14.00: Departure from SIAF. Volterra to Pisa Airport.

For more information:

• If you require more information, please contact Camilla Moonen 
• To read more about ENDURE's most recent Summer School, addressing agroecology for crop protection, click here