Click here to see the 2016 Summer School photograph album

The Summer School was held from October 9 to 14 at SIAF, an International School of Advanced Education established by the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna of Pisa and the Foundation of the Cassa di Risparmio di Volterra, Italy, and benefitted from the valuable input of the AgMIP project (The Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project).

Graduate students from Austria, France, Hungary, Italy, Madagascar, Norway, Spain and Turkey attended the event. Lecturers from several ENDURE partner institutions (ACTA, INRA, JKI, SZIE) and two internationally renowned experts invited as guest lecturers - Katia Laval (climatologist) and Marcello Donatelli (crop modeller, AgMIP project) from Paris University, France and CREA, Italy, respectively - contributed to the Summer School through a number of talks, teaching/training sessions and interactive work with the students. It focused mainly on the use of modelling approaches to implement Integrated Pest Management (IPM) strategies, with a particular emphasis on how to mitigate the effects of climate change on pest development and spread.

The week started with talks on the current state of the art on climate change and its impacts on pest development and spread. These lectures were followed by the presentation of conceptual and methodological principles of various modelling approaches, practical examples about how modelling can be used to help design IPM strategies for future climate scenarios, and a class modelling project testing IPM strategies under climate change.

“The event was very fruitful in terms of performance and outcome,” said Jean-Noel Aubertot (INRA), who coordinated the event alonside local organiser Camilla Moonen (SSSA). “It is always very challenging to organise these summer schools because the programme has to suit students with very different backgrounds and skills related to the theme of the Summer School and the teamwork we propose. We feel happy if every participant can take home something new from this event and often new collaborations and friendships are born on the occasion of the Summer School. Of course that is a great additional value and makes it worth the effort to organise these Summer Schools.” 

It was rewarding to see such motivated students working from 8am to after midnight on their class modelling tasks, said the lecturers. The students finally presented preliminary results of their project work on the last day of the summer school.

“The experience was memorable for me in terms of scientific content and the quality of teaching and interactions,” said Jay Ram Lamichhane, ENDURE scientific officer. “Indeed, I have learnt much more than I taught as a lecturer,” he added.

“The fifth ENDURE Summer School was just a boost for me in terms of my professional development; I was a student at the second ENDURE summer school in 2009 and now I attended the fifth Summer School as a lecturer,” said Mark Szalai, from Hungary’s Szent Istvan University.

Perhaps it is difficult to imagine that coding all day long and sitting next to a computer can be fun, but lecturers said they could feel the excitement when students tried to overcome obstacles such as confusing error messages or diffuse data formats.

“Sharing ideas and experiences with this group of young international researchers was a great experience,” said said Til Feike from Germany’s Julius Kühn-Institut. “I feel that during this intensive week of training a good overview of concepts and methods of modelling for IPM under climate change was provided, which supports the participants’ current and future research. The exchange with the participants and other lecturers also generated new and deepend insights for me, which will foster my own future work.”

“Learning modelling by practice is our recipe,” said Francois Brun, from ACTA, France. “During the week, we all invested a lot of energy in the collective project. With this practice, the principles of modeling are better assimilated.”

The participants (students and lecturers) collectively decided to capitalise on the work conducted during the intensive week, and consider writing a common scientific text summarising the Summer School’s most significant advances.