Organising an iomE seminar

Guest speakers for the iomE seminar series

In the iomE colloquium, we have internal and external speakers from all fields of evolutionary biology. It is jointly organised by all research groups of the institute. The colloquium usually takes place on Tuesdays at 12:15pm until approx. 1:15pm, and usually takes place in the BZ 1 lecture hall (HS 00.187). However, other days are possible if necessary. Talks are given in English. If you would like to invite a speaker, please follow the guidelines below (helpfully created by Judith, our wonderful secretary):

  • Write to Hanna about a potential speaker you would like to invite to give an iomE seminar and confirm whether it is possible. Note that at the moment, there is no institutional pot of money for inviting speakers and thus the cost of accommodation and travel for the speaker will be borne by Hanna.

  • Check the iomE seminar webpage here to look at the current seminar schedule and find available (unbooked) dates.

  • Write to the speaker with a potential date. Ideally, they should give their talk in the designated slot (12:15 - 13:15 on Tuesdays). The seminar is typically split into 45 minute talk + 15 minute Q/A but there is flexibility there. If the speaker cannot give a talk in the usual time slot, this is okay, but you will need to make sure a room is available at the time of the potential seminar and also inform the organisers well ahead of time (more on this below). The seminars usually take place in the lecture hall HS 00.187 in Biozentrum 1. You can check the availability of the room on RAPS (you need a uni-mainz ID to access this site), but you will not be able to reserve the room yourself. To reserve the room, drop Judith an email.

  • Once the speaker’s date and time slot are confirmed, write an email to the iomE seminar organisers (currently Florian Menzel and Ann Kathrin Huylmans) with the relevant information. You should give them:

    • Name of the speaker
    • Affiliation of the speaker
    • (Preliminary) title of the talk
    • Date and Time of the seminar. If you are choosing an atypical time (see previous point), please highlight this and organise it early. Please CC Christiane Stürzbecher (stuerzbe[at]uni[hyphen]mainz[dot]de) in this email, as she is currently responsible for putting things on the iomE website.

  • Ask the speaker to arrange their own travel (economy class, they should keep their receipts for reimbursement) and request the dates/no. of nights they wish to stay in Mainz so we can book them a hotel room. CC Judith in this email, she will handle the logistics of the hotel reservation. Let the Kokkonuts know when the speaker will be visiting so that we can add it to our calendars.

  • Roughly 4 weeks before the seminar: Request an abstract from the speaker.

  • 2 weeks before the seminar, send an email announcing the seminar (with an abstract) to the biology faculty talks mailing list: talks_fb10@lists.uni-mainz.de. An example email appears at the end of this page.

  • If you are going to lunch and/or dinner with the speaker (and you should!), make sure you have made restaurant reservations etc. Also let the kokkonuts know, we like to be gracious hosts and join the speaker for the meals.

  • Send a reminder email to the biology mailing list on the day of the seminar (people are forgetful and this helps).

  • Judith will take care of the reimbursement after the seminar.

A typical email to the faculty announcing the seminar will look like this:

Dear all,

I’m delighted to invite you to the next iomE seminar on [DATE] by Jane Doe from Fancy University, End of World. The seminar will be held in HS 00.187 at BZ-1 at [ONE HOUR TIME SLOT] on [DATE]. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Date: [DATE]
Speaker: Jane Doe (Fancy University, End of World)

Title: Here is a beautiful theory that unifies evolutionary biology

Abstract:

some birds are cool