It is aimed at research students interested in mathematical and statistical population genetics, and will primarily consist of student talks alongside plenary sessions given from researchers covering a mixture of academic career stages.

The conference will consist of a three-day meeting held in the Department of Statistics at the University of Warwick from 29th June to 1st July 2022. The conference will be run in person, but will have provisions for attendees to watch the talks online. The conference is partially funded by the London Mathematical Institute, Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research, the UKRI/EPSRC Additional Funding Programme for Mathematical Science, and Warwick Statistics Department.

We have accommodation and subsistence grants available to a UK-based postgraduate research students. We also have funds available to help with costs which may constitute a barrier to entry, such as childcare, transport of mobility equipment, or other bespoke arrangements on a case-by-case basis.

Registration is now open from the conference webpage until 30th April 2022, with abstract submissions open until 31st May 2022.

Jeremias Knoblauch (https://jeremiasknoblauch.github.io/), OxWaSP PhD candidate based at the University of Warwick, department of Statistics, is the recipient of the Biometrika Fellowship (http://biometrika.wikidot.com) and the EPSRC postdoctoral Fellowship (https://www.ukri.org/oppor.../epsrc-postdoctoral-fellowship/). Jeremias will be also joining UCL's department of Statistical Science as a Lecturer/Assistant Professor in due course.

The next PhD Open Days will take place on Wednesday 10 November (in-person) and Wednesday 17 November (virtual) at the Department of Statistics, University of Warwick.

PhD student Stefan Stein has been awarded an Honourable Mention in the 2021 Doctoral Researcher Awards (DRA) in the category Natural & Life Sciences. DRA (http://drawards.org.uk) is a UK wide academic competition which is awarded annually to junior researchers who are pursuing (or have recently completed) doctoral degrees in the UK. Stefan was recognized for his work based on two papers advancing our understanding of high-dimensional random networks (joint with PhD supervisor Chenlei Leng).

The official award ceremony took place on 11th Sept 2021, featuring 2016 Nobel laureate Professor Duncan Haldane and Derrick Roberts (amongst others).

Stefan also won an IMS Hannan Graduate Student Travel Award and a Honorable Mention in ASA's SLDS Student Paper Award competition earlier this year. Congratulations on your hat trick, Stefan.

Stefan Stein has recently been selected to receive an Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS) Hannan Graduate Student Travel Award. This award will cover travel expenses up to 750USD to enable Stefan to attend any IMS co-sponsored meeting.

We are also glad to share that Stefan's paper "A Sparse Beta Model with Covariates for Networks" has won an Honorable Mention in the Student Paper Award competition organised by the Statistical Learning and Data Science section (SLDS) of the American Statistical Association (ASA). Stefan's entry was selected out of 69 papers.