Marina Marcet-Houben
Center for Genomic Regulation, Spain
Dr. Marcet-Houben works on comparative genomics of fungal organisms. She uses large scale phylogenomics in order to study how fungal organisms have evolved. She is particularly interested in non-vertical evolutionary events such as horizontal gene transfer and hybridization processes. In that sense, she has been working on using phylogenomic signals in order to detect ancient polyploidization events. She has also been involved in sequencing projects of plant pathogenic Penicillium species. Recently she has been dabbling in plant phylogenomics within the Olive tree genome project.
Lisa Pokorny
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK
Dr. Pokorny is an evolutionary biologist interested in unraveling macroevolutionary patterns across Land Plants. Lisa combines high throughput sequencing and phylogenomic approaches with climate and niche modeling to explore how drastic climate shifts have affected speciation, extinction, and migration processes across tropical regions, with a focus in the assembly of Southeast Asian forests.
Eric Salomaki
Institute of Parasitology, Czech Academy of Science, Czech Republic
Dr. Salomaki is a postdoctoral researcher in the Lab of Genomics and Diversity of Protists at the Institute of Parasitology, Czech Academy of Science. He is primarily interested in the impacts of symbioses, particularly parasitism, on genome evolution. Currently, he is investigating genome evolution in diplomonads that have reverted from parasitism to become secondarily free-living organisms. Additionally, he is using comparative genomics and transcriptomics to explore the loss of photosynthesis and a transition to a parasitic life-strategy in red algae.
Jacob L. Steenwyk
Vanderbilt University, USA
My research, conducted as part of the Antonis Rokas Lab at Vanderbilt University, aims to utilize various ‘omics approaches to understand the evolution and function of fungal genomes. I implement computational tools to conduct analyses of species relationships, sequence evolution, and mutational variation across the fungal tree of life or populations thereof. These analyses can inform the evolution and/or divergence of traits important to our lives such as pathogenicity and bioindustrial traits like fermentative capacity. More generally, I am most interested in how populations and/or species evolve, diverge, and what genomic elements and traits define them.
Previous years Workshop on Genomics Instructors
Rosa Fernández, Center for Genomic Regulation, Spain
Marina Marcet-Houben, Center for Genomic Regulation, Spain
Miguel Naranjo-Ortiz, Center for Genomic Regulation, Spain
Lisa Pokorny, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK