The third summer school took place from May 8^th – 12^th and the overall topic was modelling. In detail, the program focused on SWAT+ results for ecological modelling, statistical modelling and Deep Learning. Lectures were given by Sonja Jähning, Jens Kiesel. Yusdiel Torres-Cambas, Ralf Schäfer and Bank Beszteri. The summer school also included a workshop on “Sexualized harassment and violence in the university context” which was given by Heike Pantelmann and Dr. Sabine Blackmore. Additionally, to the workshops and lectures the doctoral researchers also had a great team event including breakfast, laser tag and a nice BBQ.

The second summer school was focused on bioinformatics and eDNA and took place from June 27th – July 1st, 2022, in Essen, Germany. It comprised an introduction to R graphs and ggplot2 as well as some hands-on training in the lab. Further, the doctoral researchers learned how to work with the metabarcoding pipeline Apscale and analysed the processed data with TaxonTableTools. The summer school was rounded up with two lectures on DNA analytics and start-ups as well as a soft skill workshop on science communication to improve the knowledge of the doctoral students about how to disseminate their work inside and outside of academia. Besides workshops and lectures, the students had a great team event with geocaching and solving riddles to figure out their way to the location of the team event. The team event took place on the SeaSide-Beach at the Baldeneysee in Essen. The main task of the team event was to build a raft which was able to swim and the day was finished up by a nice BBQ.

Lectures on bioinformatics and eDNA were given by Florian Leese, Alexander Probst, Till Macher, Robin Schütz and André Rodrigues Soares. The two additional lectures on DNA analytics and startups were given by Todd DeSantis (Co-founder & Vice President of Informatics at Second Genome, Inc.; www.secondgenome.com). The networking workshop was held by Andrea Tronscoso from city2science GmbH (Wissenschaftskommunikation und Strategieberatung, Science Communication and Strategy Consulting; www.city2science.de). The team event was organized by Teamgeist West GmbH (www.teamgeist.com).

The first summer school on experimental design and statistics took place from October 4^th – 8^th, 2021 in Essen, Germany. It comprised and introduction to R, data handling, power analysis, and multivariate statistics and was rounded up with a soft skill workshop on networking and a visit of the sampling sites of RESIST at the Boye and the World Heritage „Zeche Zollverein“.

Lectures on R were given by Arne Beermann, Daniela Beißer, Christian Feld and Florian Leese. The networking workshop was held by Rob Thompson from RTTA – soft skills for real results (www.rtta.net).