On April 18, we had our second meeting for the ANR-funded research project MAGNIPHY, which aims at combining phylogenetic and Evo-Devo approaches to unravel the evolution of flowers in the large plant clade Magnoliidae. Pictured, from left to right: Sophie Nadot, Catherine Damerval, Hervé Sauquet, Thomas Couvreur, Elisabeth Reyes, Stefan Little, Véronique Normand, Etienne Delannoy, Julien Massoni, Laetitia Carrive.

Two important events happened last week in our lab: Hervé defended his Habilitation à Diriger les Recherches (HDR) on April 9 and Julien defended his PhD thesis on April 11. Julien's PhD focused on the Phylogeny, molecular dating, and floral evolution of Magnoliidae (Angiospermae). Many congratulations to Julien for a really nice work! We have also been lucky to have the visit of Susana Magallón from UNAM, who acted as an external reviewer on both the HDR and PhD thesis.

This week, Stefan Little joined us as a postdoctoral fellow funded by project MAGNIPHY to work on floral transcriptomics of Magnoliidae for two years. Previously, Stefan was a postdoc at the University of Victoria in Bristish Columbia (Canada). Welcome to France, Stefan!