About

The AURA (Aboa Universities’ Research Advances) Symposium is jointly organized by PhD students from both universities in Turku: the University of Turku (UTU) and Åbo Akademi University (ÅA). The biennial symposium has been a traditional element in local meetings for about two decades, and has served to bring together graduate students from the Biodiversity unit and Department of Biology (UTU), and Environmental and Marine Biology (ÅA). In 2016, an interest was expressed to open the AURA symposium to all students of the Doctoral Programme in Biology, Geography and Geology (BGG) in the UTU Graduate School. Biology, geography, and geology at both universities are in many aspects already highly integrated in terms of teaching and, to some extent, location.

The symposium offers students and researchers from different sections and departments a chance to come together, learn about each other’s research projects, and exchange ideas. We hope the symposium will encourage further collaboration between the two universities, as well as between the different fields of study.

How is it organized?

The symposium has traditionally been organized at the campus in Turku, with the exception of the 2021 edition being online due to the pandemic! The two-and-a-half-day symposium will be split into four different thematic sessions, each session being led off with a plenary talk given by one keynote speaker (60 min). In addition to the plenary talks, the symposium has traditionally hosted approximately 20-25 oral presentations by PhD students and 20 poster presentations by both PhD and MSc students.

There are a limited number of slots for oral presentations and priority will be given to PhD students from UTU and ÅAU, thereafter MSc students and PhD students from other Finnish Universities.  If necessary, abstracts will be selected by the organizing committee. All participants who give a presentation will receive credit points (2 ECTS) and valuable feedback from the keynote speakers.

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