Our Vision
Implement a European platform under the umbrella of the EAAP where all scientists, during their early career, meet and share their experiences, expectations and aspirations.
Our Mission
Reach young scientists, encourage them to expand their scientific networks through social media and activities at the EAAP meetings.
Our Strategy
Allow Young and Early Career Scientists to:
Who can be a Member of YoungEAAP?
All members of EAAP can join the YoungEAAP if they meet one of the following criteria:
Past activities
EAAP 2014 in Copenhagen, Denmark
Young EAAP organized 2 events and participated in judging two competitions during the EAAP 2014.
The Young Train session had 14 young researchers presenting on dairy innovatives and extension research. Presentations were extremely competitive. The Schaumann Stiftung Award to attend the JAM 2015 in Florida, USA went to Anne Fischer from INRA, France whereas the Wageningen Academic Publishers Award to attend the EAAP 2015 meeting in Warsaw, Poland went to Marco Horn from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna, Austria.
Under the challenge program “Careers in the Livestock Industry”, our club hosted representatives from different sections of the Livestock Industry who gave interesting overviews of their career paths. Reinhard Grandke, Director General of the German Agricultural Society, Simon Lague, Business Development Manager for Fancom BV and creator of the iFarming brand philosophy, and Michael Pearce, Zoetis Animal Health, all gave very interesting insights into their expectations on the qualifications and skills of young scientists. Lively discussions during our ice cream social followed.
The commission on animal genetics started a joined competition for young scientists under 35 years of age. Our club participated in judging 14 oral presentations of excellent quality and the jury, composed of members of the animal genetics commission, had a hard time deciding on a winner. Finally, Han Mulder from Wageningen University was selected.
EAAP 2015 in Warsaw, Poland
The Young train session “Dairy innovative research and extension” was chaired by the club, during which 11 young scientists from all over Europe competed with their presentations for two awards. The selection procedure was very challenging, because all young scientists gave excellent presentations on various interesting topics related to dairy production. Akke Kok from Wageningen University won the JAM2016 award sponsored by Novus for her presentation on “Comparing cows – including dry period and lactation length in a yield measure”. The second award for EAAP 2016 attendance sponsored by Wageningen Academic Press received Johanna Brändle from BOKU-University of Natural Resource and Life Sciences Vienna for her talk on “Bacterially induced cheese blowing defects with particular attention to butyric acid clostridia”.
On Tuesday, YoungEAAP held its industry session entitled with “Important factors to consider when applying for academia and industry jobs”. The session focused on preparing young scientists to future careers in academia and industry. Invited speaker Dr. Leon Spicer, Oklahoma State University, presented 2 sessions on CV vs resume writing, and interviewing skills: tips for do’s and don’ts. He brought in words and advice from Dr. Michael Pearce, Zoetis, Belgium. The session was attended by more than 35 young scientists. Discussions and a social networking event followed. The session was extremely helpful due to its practical nature. Many young scientists commented on how important such soft skills are for making them better prepared for the job market especially that this is the first session of its kind that they attend. YoungEAAP intends to bring more such sessions to assist young scientists in developing their curriculum with more skills to better equip them for competitiveness.
The “Genetics commission early career scientist competition” was held as a competition for best presentation among young scientists in genetics field with YoungEAAP being part of the jury. After a tough competition, Inga Blunk from Leibniz Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN) won with her presentation on “A new model for an imprinting analysis of Brown Swiss slaughterhouse data”. The second price went to Marna Martinez-Alvaro from Universitat Politécnica de Valencia for her poster presentation on “Effect of divergent selection for intramuscular fat on lipid metabolism traits in rabbits”.
EAAP 2016 in Belfast, UK
The first highlight started on Monday morning with the Young Scientist Competition of the Genetics Commission will start, which continued on Tuesday afternoon.
During the Young Train Session on “Innovative research and extension in dairy farming, cattle and products, 14 high-quality presentations of young scientists competed for two awards. Akos Kenez (University of Hohenheim, Germany) won the Novus Award, offering a visit to the congress of the American Dairy Science Association. Diana Sorg (Martin Luther University Halle, Germany) received the Wageningen Academic Publishers Award, offering a scholarship to attend the EAAP Meeting in Tallinn.
The Session “Succession planning for European livestock farmers” was organized jointly by Young EAAP, Ulster Farmer Union and the Young Farmer Club of Ulster. The Session was divided into the two sections “Succession Status, Dynamics and Drivers in EU Livestock Farming” and “Industry and Policy Responses to Succession Issues”.
After the three “Young Scientist” Sessions the social meeting of Young Scientists took place with delicious sacks and drinks.
EAAP 2017 in Tallinn, Estonia
As every year YoungEAAP enjoyed to support the Young Train Session – Dairy innovation in research and extension. Congratulations again to the two winners of the competition! Carlotta Giromini was awarded with the Novus Award for her presentation entitled “A comparison of the in vitro ACE inhibitory capacity of dairy and plant proteins”. She obtained her Ph.D in Biotechnologies applied to animal science and production from the University of Milan, Italy and is currently working as Post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Health, Animal Science and Food Safety at the University of Milan. Novus invites her to the US to present her work at the next Annual Meeting of the American Dairy Science Association. Enjoy the trip! Biaty Raymond received the Wageningen Academic Publisher Award for his talk on “Utility of whole genome sequence data for across breed genomic prediction”. Currently, he is Ph.D candidate in Animal Breeding and Genomics at the Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands. He will get free admission to the next EAAP Annual Meeting. Phalla Miech (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences) was awarded for the best poster, which was entitled “Growth of reared Cambodian field crickets (Teleogryllus testaceus) fed weeds, and agricultural and food industry by-products”. You can still have a look at it at the EAAP facebook page!
On Wednesday the YoungEAAP Session on “Rules and guidelines for successful funding and research: Opportunities for young scientists” attracted many young scientists. Hans Spoolder (Wageningen Livestock Research), Claire Wathes (Royal Veterinary College London) and Gus Rose (Aristothle University of Thessaloniki) gave us nice hints how to improve proposal writing. We will keep them in mind when we start to write a proposal next time! You can ask for the slides by mail to: christian.lambertz@unibz.it.
After the session, networking was intensified in a nice atmosphere in the young scientist reception.
EAAP 2018 in Dubrovnik, Croatia
Award Sessions
This year’s EAAP conference was full of Young Scientists activities. The week started with the Young Train Session: Dairy innovative research and extension on Monday. This session was hosted by Young EAAP together with the Cattle Commission. During the session the Novus Award was awarded to Ruth Bønløkke Davis from Aarhus University and SEGES in Denmark for her presentation entitled “Estimation of genetic parameters for young stock survival in Danish beef x dairy crossbred calves”. This study was part of her MSc thesis. The Novus Award will grant Ruth to visit the US and present her work at the next Annual Meeting of the American Dairy Science Association from June 23-26 in Cincanatti, Ohio.
The Wageningen Academic Publishers’ Award for the best presentation was awarded during the session Pig behavior and/or machine learning on Wednesday. The session was hosted together with the Pig Commission. Jen-Yun Chou from Teagasc in Ireland was awarded the price for her presentation “Rearing undocked pigs on fully-slatted floors using multiple enrichment and variety: a pilot”. Jen-Yun is a PhD student at Teagasc in collaboration with SRUC and the University of Edinburgh. She will be granted free admission to next year’s EAAP conference in Ghent.
The EAAP Rommert Politiek Award for the best poster was awarded to Nina Karapandža from the Croatian Agricultural Agency for her poster “Estimation of inbreeding and effective population size in Simmental cattle using genomic information”.
Speed Dating
As one of the highlights for young and early career scientists, the 1st Speed Dating Event took place during the lunch break on Tuesday. Four specific research fields were selected (PLF, Health & Welfare, Cattle Genetics and Pig Production). For each of these fields, 3 representatives from the industry (icerobotics, idele and illumina), EU-projects (BioBusiness, Feed-a-Gene and GenTORE) and research institutions (Wageningen Livestock Research, Swedisch University of Agricultural Sciences, University of Zagreb) “dated” small groups of young scientists. More than 35 master and PhD students and early career PostDoc’s enjoyed to discuss in a relaxed atmosphere with the senior researchers about the hot research topics of the future, management of research projects and consortia and changing job requirements in academia and livestock industry.
Committee Members at a glace
Dr. Christian Lambertz (President)
Email: Christian.Lambertz@unibz.it
Dr. Anamarija Smetko (Secretary)
Email: asmetko1@gmail.com
MSc Torun Wallgren (Secretary)
Interested? Contact us and join youngEAAP!
You can download the membership form here:
What is the Young EAAP?
YoungEAAP is a group of young scientists organized under the EAAP umbrella. It aims to create a platform where scientists during their early career get the opportunity to meet and share their experiences, expectations and aspirations. This is done through activities at the Annual EAAP Meetings and social media. The large constituency and diversity of the EAAP member countries, commissions and delegates create a very important platform to stay up-to-date, close the gap between our training and the future employer expectations, while fine-tuning our skills and providing young scientists applied and industry-relevant research ideas.