Preliminary program
Program Overview Plenary Speakers Workshop Conference Dinner
Program Overview
Venue: The meeting will be hosted in the (Diamond) at the University of Sheffield.
Plenary Speakers
We are delighted to announce three fantastic plenary speakers!
Katerina Guschanski
Senior Lecturer in Genomics, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh & Department of Ecology and Genetics, Animal Ecology, Uppsala University
About Katerina. The work in my group focuses on questions in speciation genomics, conservation genomics, and metagenomics. We like using samples that others tend to stay away from: feaces, bones, skins, and preserved bacterial biofilms contained in dental calculus. These samples have a story to tell, not only about the individual they come from but also about the time when this individual lived. It is this temporal aspect that we are most excited about.
Preliminary talk title: Old samples - new insights: Museum collections as time machines for questions in ecology, evolution, and conservation
Stephen Wright
Professor and Canada Research Chair in Population Genomics, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto
About Stephen. Research in the lab focuses on plant population and evolutionary genomics, with a particular focus on the causes and consequences of reproductive system evolution, and on understanding the genomic extent and dynamics of plant adaptation. Our goals are to use population and evolutionary genomics to test long-standing evolutionary theory, and to apply evolutionary perspectives to better understand genome structure and function.
Preliminary talk title: Adaptation and maladaption in plant genome
Ravinder Kanda
Senior Lecturer in Evolutionary Genomics, Department of Biological and Medical Sciences, Oxford Brookes University
About Ravinder. Research in my group focuses on understanding the various evolutionary processes that have shaped the composition and evolution of genomes; more recently the focus has been on Endogenous Viral Elements (EVE’s) which constitute a substantial portion of vertebrate genomes. To date, much of the research in this area has focused on mammalian genomes. With the abundance of genomic data from a variety of species now available, we now have the opportunity to investigate the impact of these virally derived insertions across the tree of life.
Preliminary talk title: Stowaways in the Genome
Workshop
The NERC Environmental Omics Facility (NEOF) will provide a workshop titled Population Genomics on Monday afternoon 6th January, 2-5pm.
Join the NEOF bioinformatics team for this short session where we will demystify the process of using the command line to analyse genetic variation.
We will use an example data set of Illumina sequences to detect single nucleotide polymorphisms and plot patterns of genetic structure.
This session is aimed at beginners - anyone who has never used command line tools but would like to learn or plans to generate some sequencing data soon. No prior experience is necessary.
This hands-on workshop will cover: • Simple command line • Illumina sequencing data quality and cleaning • Aligning your reads to a reference genome • SNP calling and filtering • Population admixture and PCA plots
Important: You will require your own laptop that can connect to eduroam during the course, but you do not need to install any software as the workshop will run via a web browser.
We will charge a registration fee of £10 per person and you can register for the workshop as part of the general registration form for the Population Genetics Group meeting (see Registration).
Register to NEOF mailing list to hear first about future NEOF free bioinformatics courses: https://neof.org.uk/news/
Conference Dinner
The Conference Dinner will be held at Kelham Island Museum on Thursday 9th January. The museum showcases Sheffield’s industrial heritage, and guests will have time to explore the museum during their visit. There will also be a demonstration of The River Don Engine. Built in 1904, it is one of the most powerful steam engines ever constructed and has been used to make armour plates for battleships and reactor shields for nuclear power plants. A three course Dinner will then be held in the Upper Gallery before the tables are cleared away and the dancing starts! This year we have Powerhouse Ceilidh Band performing - Sheffield’s finest geek-rock-folk ceilidh band!
You can book a ticket for the Conference Dinner as part of the general registration form for the Population Genetics Group meeting (see Registration) at an extra cost of £60. Please note that places for the Conference Dinner are limited.
