Course on Quantitative Genetics

Last week we attended a quantitative genetics course in the City of Life Sciences.  Five days of information flow about Selection theory and other advanced topics from the field (course notes available). It was a great experience from several reasons.


First of all: The presenter was none other than Bruce Walsh from University of Arizona. He is a well known, I would say iconic, figure in quantitative genetics. In short, one of the best to learn from.
In addition we practically got his new book in form of course notes. Several hundred pages which were only partially covered during the course - there are loads of things to read at home. To say the truth, if he would say everything from there we would celebrate the New Year there for sure.
The only drawback was/is that the slides are available only for Mac. It would be good to have a "European friendly" PC version as well.


The other great part of the course was the environment itself. This was my third visit of the Netherlands (all in Wageningen), but I just love to return here. This was the first time I had the opportunity to try out the typical Dutch habit of biking. Our hotel was around 5km from the course venue, so we got an additional exercise two times a day. Fortunately the terrain was flat, so we had no big difficulties moving around.

In fact there is a hill near Wageningen which might be mentionable in the Netherlands, but it is ridiculously small everywhere else. Bruce was making jokes during the whole course about this, calling it "Mount Wageningen" :) Yep... Compared to Rocky mountains it is a difference.