One year of the EXTEMIT-K project implementation is over and we´re about to summarize and evaluate beginning of the project implementation. That´s why we´are now preparing 2nd External Advisory Board meeting, which will be held from 14th till 16th March 2018, mostly in the Pavilion of Wood Sciences at Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences (FFWS) Czech University of Life Sciences Prague (CZU).
This meeting will happen with the participation of Czech and foreign scientific experts and members of the EXTEMIT-K project research team.
Scientific experts as follows:
Jiří Balík Rector Emeritus of the Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, professor of agroenvironmental chemistry and plant nutrition.
Bill Hansson Entomologist from the Department of Evolutionary Neuroethology, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. He studies insect olfactory system, chemical ecology and chemoreception.
Paal Krokene Entomologist from the Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute. He investigates various aspects of conifer defence against insects and fungi, effects of climate change on forest insects, especially bark beetles (Ips typographus).
Sigrid Netherer Institute of Forest Entomology, Forest Pathology and Forest Protection BOKU Vienna. Specialist in forest entomology, pathology and protection.
Johanna Witzell Associate professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, editor-in-chief of Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research. Her research interests are forest damages, tree resistance, stress responses, and functional traits of fungal endophytes of trees, Dutch elm disease and invasive Phytophthora-species.
Naoto Kamata
Professor at the University of Tokyo Hokkaido Forest. He works in Ecology (Plant-animal interactions, Population ecology of forest insects, community ecology). Research topics: Forest defoliating insects and biotic and abiotic factors / Wood-boring insects with special reference to tree-killing disease / Forest decline and regime shift induced by overpopulated deer / Masting behavior and predispersal insect predation.
Lauri Hetemäki
Asistent Director at European Forest Institute. He works on foresight studies for the global and European forest based bioeconomy, he manages and coordinates EFI policy support work, including the ThinkForest high-level science-policy forum.
Will Walker
Associate Professor at SLU. He has a professional experience with expertise in molecular biology, including 4 years with genomics/transcriptomics bioinformatics-based data analysis. He´s currently working as a transcriptomics and molecular biology research leader, managing his own projects as well as supervising several colleagues.
During 2nd EAB meeting we´ll be evaluating project activities as 2017´s scientific results, public procurements, member staffing, hiring postdocs and PhD students, international scientific visits in Prague, conferences/workshops/seminars attendance, publications, web preparation and updates etc.
As special part of the programme, we prepared a scientific mini-sympozium on 15th March with these topics:
| Number | Level | Name | Topic |
| 1 | G | Bill Hansson | Ecologically labelled lines underlying insect smell-driven behaviour |
| 2 | G | Will Walker | Adding "the Molecular" to chemical ecology - a synthesis of odorant receptor expression and function |
| 3 | T | Naoto Kamata | Aggregation pheromone of an ambrosia beetle Platypus quercivorus |
| 4 | T | Karel Kuželka | Assessment of forest qualitative parameters using modern remote sensing techniques |
| 5 | T | Sigrid Netherer | Water-limiting conditions predisposing spruce to bark beetle attack |
| 6 | L | Miroslav Svoboda | Natural disturbances in dynamics of natural spruce mountain forests in central and east Europe |
| 7 | L | Jiří Korecký et al. | Genetic structure of ecotypes of Norway spruce – first results |
Besides the topics mentioned above, there will be some informal meetings of EAB members, EXTEMIT-K project team and European Forest Institute (Finland) representatives (on bark beetle problematic in Europe). Possibilities of new grants and other cooperation will be discussed. We can expect new recommendations for another year (years) of project implementation as well. We hope this meeting will be as successful as was the 1st EAB meeting in 2017.