Keynote Speaker
Duggan Professor and Distinguished Professor
Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology
University of California, Santa Barbara
"Adult Reproductive Diapause in Drosophila - Who Knew?
Invited Speakers
i5K/Comparative Genomics
Jamie Walters
Assistant Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
University of Kansas
"Comparative proteomics and population genomics of dimorphic sperm in Lepidoptera"
Stress Response
Yehuda Ben-Shahar
Associate Professor of Biology and Medicine
Washington University in St. Louis
"Acute heat stress and the remarkable robustness of the insect nervous system"
Luisa Orsini
Senior Lecturer in Biosystems and Climate Change
Director of the Environmental Omics Sequencing Facility
University of Birmingham
"The role of genome structural variation on plastic and constitutive phenotypic divergence in multifarious environments"
Nick Teets
Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology
University of Kentucky
"Mechanisms of environmental stress tolerance in Antarctica’s only endemic insect."
Bioinformatics
Visiting Project Scientist, Earth BioGenome Project
University of California Davis
"Can we get to telomere to telomere arthropod assemblies?"
Stephane Rombauts
Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Genomics
Ghent University
Surya Saha
Senior Bioinformatics Analyst
Boyce Thompson Institute
"Genome annotation and databases: value of a systems approach to building community resources"
Microbiome
Kerri Coon
Assistant Professor, Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin-Madison
"Microbial regulation of molting in mosquitos"
Nsa Dada
Research Fellow
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
"The mosquito microbiota and insecticide resistance"
Shahideh Nouri
Assistant Professor, Department of Plant Pathology
Kansas State University
“The virome of the Asian citrus psyllid: from discovery to potential translational applications"
Evo/Devo
Mark Rebeiz
Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences
University of Pittsburgh
"From pattern to process in the study of morphological novelty"
Yoshinori Tomoyasu
Associate Professor, Department of Biology
Miami University
"Enhancer identification and activity evaluation in the red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum"
Vector Biology
Conor McMeniman
Assistant Professor, Molecular Microbiology & Immunology
John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
"Decoding Mosquito Chemosensory Biology using Genome Engineering"
Assistant Professor, Microbiology & Immunology
Medical College of Wisconsin
"Filtering non-coding DNA for function: The influence of genetic polymorphism on transcriptional enhancer activity in the malaria vector Anopheles coluzzii"
Abstract Speakers
i5k/Comparative Genomics
Anna Childers
Computational Biologist
USDA-ARS, BARC
"USDA-ARS's Ag100Pest Initiative Boosts the Earth BioGenome Project's Moonshot"
Nick Grishin
Professor of Biochemistry
University of Texas Southwestern
"Phylogenomics of butterflies"
Liuqi Gu
Postdoctoral Researcher
Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
University of Kansas
"Both Drosophila- and mammalian-style dosage compensation on the neo Z chromosome in the monarch butterfly"
Yiyuan Li
Postdoctoral Researcher
Department of Integrative Biology
University of Texas at Austin
"Gene Family Evolution in the Pea Aphid Based on Chromosome-level Genome Assembly
Olena Maiakovska
PhD Student
Division of Epigenetics
German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)
"The genome of the marbled crayfish and its origin"
Petr Nguyen
Faculty of Science
Institute of Entomology
University of South Bohemia
"Sex chromosome evolution in spiders (Araneae)
Kevin Sugier
PhD Student
CEA-Genoscope
"The role of the LNR domain-containing protein explosion in Oithona nana male differentiation (Crustacea; Cyclopoida)"
Jing Zhang
Research Assistant
University of Texas Southwestern
"Gypsy moth genome provides insights into flight capability and virus-host interactions"
Stress Response
Joshua Benoit
Assistant Professor
Department of Biological Sciences
University of Cincinnati
"Transcriptional shifts underlying Drosophila-mite interactions identifies mechanisms of resistance and trade-off during host-parasite dynamics"
Amanda Stahlke
PhD Student
Institute for Bioinformatics & Evolutionary Studies
University of Idaho
"De Novo Genome Assembly and RADseq Advance Understanding of Hybridization and Range Expansion Dynamics in the Introduced Biocontrol Agent, the Tamarisk Leaf Beetle (Diorhabda spp.)"
Zixiao Zhao
PhD Student
Division of Plant Sciences
University of Missouri
"Alternative splicing in Diabrotica virgifera virgifera larval midgut in association with Bt resistance"
Bioinformatics
Romain Feron
PhD Student
University of Lausanne and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics
"Characterisation of evolutionary signatures using multispecies whole genome alignments"
Sarah Kingan
Staff Bioinformatics Scientist
Pacific Biosciences
"Reference genome assemblies using long PacBio reads for non-inbred single insects"
Livio Ruzzante
PhD Student
University of Lausanne and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics
"Evolutionary-functional genomics for an enhanced resolution of arthropod gene function"
Robert Waterhouse
Swiss National Science Foundation Professor Scholar
University of Lausanne and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics
"Evolutionary features of disease-vector mosquito immunity"
Evo/Devo
Welcome Bender
Harold T. White Professor of Biological Chemistry & Molecular Pharmacology
Harvard Medical School
"G+C Oscillations in Genomic DNA"
Richard Meisel
Assistant Professor
Department of Biology & Chemistry
University of Houston
"Contrasting fast and slow rates of sex chromosome turnover across insects"
Vector Biology
Maria Luisa Simoes
Postdoctoral Fellow
Malaria Research Institute
John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
"CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing to block malaria transmission"
