Three SLiM Workshops in Europe, 2026
Ben Haller
Hi folks!
I'm excited to announce that there will be THREE SLiM workshops in Europe in the summer of 2026 (NEXT YEAR!). The dates, places, and hosts will be:
Paris (France): May 18 – May 22, 2026
In Paris, France, at the Musee de l’Homme near the Eiffel Tower. Hosted by the Anthropological Genetics team from the Eco-Anthropology lab (CNRS – Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle – Université Paris Cité): Nina Marchi, Frédéric Austerlitz & Bruno Toupance.
Tartu (Estonia): June 15 – June 19, 2026
At the University of Tartu, in the city of Tartu in southeastern Estonia (about a 2-hour drive from Tallinn). Hosted by Mait Metspalu and Jose Rodrigo Flores Espinosa (University of Tartu).
Reykjavík (Iceland): August 17 – August 21, 2026
At the University of Iceland, in Reykjavík, Iceland. Hosted by Áki Jarl Láruson (Marine & Freshwater Research Institute of Iceland) and Snæbjörn Pálsson (University of Iceland). NOTE 1: there will be a total solar eclipse that will be visible from western Iceland, including Reykjavík, on August 12, 2026. You might want to arrive to Reykjavík early so you can see the eclipse! You can read all about it here: https://eclipsophile.com/tse2026/. Due to this eclipse, it might be difficult to book lodging, although probably that will ease up by the week of the workshop itself. Please make sure that there are acceptable lodging options for your dates before applying for a spot in this workshop. NOTE 2: The Iceland workshop was announced previously, and has already been taking registrations. If you are already registered for it, please do not apply again!
These workshops are ALL OPEN FOR REGISTRATION NOW. They will be free, and open to participants outside of the hosting institution. HOWEVER, registration is required, and a limited number of seats (~30) are available in each. These dates are a long way out at this point, obviously! I do expect some or all of these workshops to fill, though, so you might not want to wait too terribly long to register, if you can make plans that far in advance. Note that in all cases, half of the seats are first-come-first-served starting now, and the other half are reserved for priority registrations from people at the host institution(s) for one month (to the end of 10 November 2025) and will then revert to first-come-first-served.
To apply to these workshops, please fill out the application form at https://forms.gle/o8MzzJLck6q6v3Zu7. There is one joint application form for all three workshops, and you will be able to indicate first/second/third choice if you wish. Please read it carefully. Note that there will be no automatic confirmation email after you submit the form; you will hear from me personally (bha...@mac.com) by email once I have handled your application. I suggest that you whitelist my email address when you apply, so that you are sure to receive my emails; if I cannot communicate with you, your registration will be dropped (and yes, this has happened). Please do not make travel arrangements until you have been formally accepted to the workshop. Please do not apply to a workshop unless you are sufficiently serious that you will actually attend, if accepted.
There are no strict prerequisites for the workshop, but it is recommended that all attendees have at least a little experience programming; if you have no programming experience, it is recommended that you complete an introductory R course beforehand. (SLiM does not use R, but it is similar.) Further information for attendees can be found at http://benhaller.com/workshops/workshops_attendees.html. Note that you will be responsible for arranging your own food, lodging, and transportation, except as may be noted above for particular workshops.
The plan is to cover all the major topics in the SLiM manual, starting with lots of introductory material to get beginners up to speed with SLiM and its associated scripting language Eidos, and ending up at advanced topics like non-Wright-Fisher models, tree-sequence recording, continuous-space models, nucleotide-based models, and multispecies models. We won't cover everything in the manual – that would be overwhelming! – but we'll try to cover all the big topics. There will also be time for attendees to work on their own models with help from me (most of the day Friday, typically), and we may also have time to explore some optional side topics that are of particular interest to those attending each workshop.
The workshop will be taught principally using SLiMgui, SLiM's graphical modeling environment. SLiMgui is cross-platform on macOS, Linux, and Windows. Every attendee will need their own laptop with SLiM and SLiMgui installed (see the info for attendees page for more information on software and hardware requirements). Loaner laptops are sometimes available for workshops, for those who do not have one; you can request one on the application form, but we cannot guarantee at this time that one will be available.
Note that there may also be other workshops offered in other places, whether already announced or to be announced in the future. If you want to know about other SLiM workshops, please watch the slim-discuss or slim-announce mailing lists; workshop announcements are always posted there first.
Please spread the word so more folks hear about this; feel free to share the link to this post on social media and such. Also, I'm hoping to continue doing workshops in future; if you would like to invite me to give a workshop at your institution, please send me an email (off-list).
Cheers,
Benjamin C. Haller
Messer Lab
Cornell University