The talk ‘Of bees and BOOMs: the evolution of a nutritional mutualism between Wolbachia and solitary bees’ has been selected as the best oral presentation of this year’s meeting.
We are proud to announce that Leopold Preuß, a PhD student in the Evolution and Biodiversity Group at Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, has won the AllGenetics-EMPSEB Award 2026. His talk was selected by the EMPSEB committee as the best oral presentation of the meeting.
Preuß’s PhD project explores B-Vitamin supplementation by Wolbachia to insect hosts.
This year’s EMPSEB took place from 8 to 12 June 2026 in Oberwiesenthal, Germany, and was organised by PhD students from Germany, Belgium, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Finland.
The EMPSEB meetings began in 1995 and are now considered a classic annual gathering for doctoral students from around the world.
AllGenetics has proudly sponsored this event since 2012, offering the AllGenetics-EMPSEB Award for the best oral presentation at the meeting.
The AllGenetics-EMPSEB Award has recognised many outstanding researchers over the years. The previous winners are:
- Mareike Wurdack (Universität Freiburg) in 2012.
- Pepijn Kamminga (Universiteit Leiden) in 2013.
- Margo Maex (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) in 2014.
- John Bruce (University of Oxford) in 2015.
- Amy Eacock (University of Liverpool) in 2016.
- Sebastiano de Bona (Jyväskylän Yliopisto) in 2017.
- Unni Pulliainen (Helsingin Yliopisto) in 2018.
- Lucy Rebecca Davies (Aarhus Universitet) in 2019.
- Chloe Fouilloux (Jyväskylän Yliopisto) in 2021.
- Jana Riederer (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen) in 2022.
- Samantha López Clinton (Naturhistoriska Riksmuseet and Stockholms Universitet) in 2023.
- Jaime Morín Lagos (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) in 2024.
- Tarunkishwor Yumnam (Institute of Science Education and Research in Thiruvananthapuram) in 2025.