The symposium takes place from Monday, August 26th, to Wednesday, August 28th, in Göttingen, Germany. Additionally, the first two days of the symposium will feature poster sessions. For more information, please check the event homepage.

The International Plant Immunity Symposium 2021 (IPIS2021) was held online on 24th and 25th August, 2021. In addition to 54 members in the IRTG 2172 PRoTECT program, 278 external students and researchers from 15 countries registered to the symposium. The symposium started with a welcome speech given by the speaker of the program, Prof. Dr. Ivo Fussner, introducing the IRTG 2172 PRoTECT program and the general concept of the International Plant Immunity Symposium. 11 invited speakers and 4 IRTG 2172 students/postdocs gave talks during the 6 sessions of the symposium. In addition to the scientific talks covering various topics in plant immunity, there was also a lively discussion on the necessity and ways to talk about science to the public. After the talks of each day, there were after symposium discussion sessions where the participants could choose several breakout rooms to talk with individual speakers who gave talks on that day. This proved to be a great exchange of ideas. In addition to the discussion sessions, the PRoTECT PhD students had the opportunity to have separate meetings with each invited guest speakers. In these meetings, the students were able to ask questions regarding researche and personal career development. The guest speakers shared experiences and opinions in their scientific careers, which was very helpful for the young researchers in pursuing their future careers. By organizing the IPIS2021, the PRoTECT PhD students not only got the opportunity to broaden scientific frontiers, but also were able to gaine experience in working as a team, organizing international online events and communicating with senior researchers. Moreover, we got the opportunity to let more people know about our work in IRTG 2172 PRoTECT. The organization of this event turned out to be a very treasurable experience in our scientific career. The symposium focused on live talks by our eleven invited speakers. In addition, doctoral students of PRoTECT (both from Göttingen and Vancouver) discussed their most important research findings.

On June 14th/15th 2018 the International Plant Immunity Symposium took place in Göttingen in Tagungszentrum "Alte Mensa". The symposium was organized by the International Research Training Group (IRTG) 2172.

During the symposium, the doctoral students and senior researchers of the IRTG 2172 presented their most recent research findings. To put these results into context, internationally leading plant immunity scientists gave insights in their up-to-date work. Master students, grad students as well as postdocs from the field of plant-microbe interaction also presented their research during extensive poster sessions.

This two-day symposium provided a platform to set up a scientific network as well as to discuss most recent research findings, new methods, and to get in contact with experts in that area of plant immunity.

The symposium program consisted of 23 lectures over the two days. Seven of the lectures were held by the invited renowned speakers. During the poster sessions 45 posters were presented. Overall, the symposium had 126 participants. Of these, 36 were German and Canadian members of the Research Training Group IRTG 2172 PRoTECT. From the University of Göttingen (including Göttingen IRTG members) came 72 participants. 110 participants came from research institutions in Germany (including the University of Göttingen) and 16 came from research institutions outside Germany (Denmark, Italy, Canada, Spain, USA) Among the participants, there was a high proportion of graduate students or young PhDs, which is explained by the orientation of the symposium as a junior researcher conference. At the same time, this also confirms the success of the concept.

	We thank all our sponsors and collaboration partners from DFG, NSERC CREATE, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, University of British Columbia, Göttingen Graduate School for Neurosciences, Biophysics, and Molecular Biosciences GGNB, Goettingen Center for Molecular Biosciences GZMB, KWS Saat SE Einbeck, Sartorius AG Göttingen.