ICG Seminar Series (formerly CGEB)

• Dr. Eric Bapteste, Sorbonne Université, November 17, 2023. “Network-thinking in evolutionary biology: can we still uncover surprising interactions involving the microbial world?”

• Dr. Arvind Mer, University of Ottawa, November 15, 2023. “Machine learning for the quantification of drug response in cancer”

• Dr. Kat Milligan-McClellan, University of Connecticut, October 19, 2023 (virtual seminar). “Adapting threespine stickleback for host-microbe studies: Diversity matters”

• Saima Sidik, Freelance Science Journalist, Somerville, MA, April 6, 2023.  “Careers in science communication with a focus on science journalism”

• Dr. Yuji Inagaki, University of Tsukuba, March 21, 2023.  “Serial secondary and tertiary endosymbiosis in dinoflagellates”

•  Dr. Jesse Bloom, Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center, March 9, 2023 (virtual seminar).  “Interpreting the evolution of SARS-CoV-2”

• Dr. Matt Field, James Cook University, December 15, 2022.“The Australian Dingo is an early offshoot of modern breed dogs”

• Dr. Laura Katz, Smith College, December 9, 2022. “Analyses of microeukaryotes rewrite the ‘rules’ of genome evolution derived from studies of macrobes”

• Dr. Michael Surette, McMaster University, December 8, 2022 (co-sponsored with Microbiology & Immunology).  “Agar, toothpicks, sequencers and the human microbiome”

• Dr. Minh Bui, Australian National University, October 17, 2022 (co-sponsored with Mathematics & Statistics). “Complex models of sequence evolution for phylogenomics”

•  Dr. Lawrence Goodridge, University of Guelph, March 31, 2022.  “Salmo-Seq: A new approach to detection of Salmonella enteric”

•  Dr. Shin-Han Shiu, Michigan State University, March 17, 2022.  “Understanding genetic redundancy using plant as model”

• Dr. Meghan Azad, University of Manitoba, November 8, 2021.  “Mother’s milk and baby bacteria: How breastfeeding shapes the infant microbiome”

• Professor Edward C. Holmes, ARC Australian Laureate Fellow, University of Sydney, October 14th, 2021. “The Origin and Ongoing Evolution of SARS-CoV-2”

• Dr. Travis Gagie, Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, November 5, 2020. “Multi-genome references”

• Dr. Ramon Massana, Institut de Ciències del Mar, CSIC, Barcelona, Spain, February 13, 2020. “Exploring the hidden diversity of the smallest marine protists”

• Dr. Marc Suchard, University of California, Los Angeles, October 3, 2019. “Gradients do grow on trees: linear-time gradients for high-dimensional phylogenetics”

• Dr. Ziheng Yang, University College London, August 22, 2019. “Bayesian model selection”

• Dr. Maureen O’Malley, University of Sydney, July 4, 2019. “The principle of microbial infallibility in the metagenomic era”

• Dr. Jennifer Stearns, McMaster University, June 12, 2019. “Our friends the bifidobacteria: molecular and culture based stories from the infant gut microbiome”

• Dr. Laura Sycuro, University of Calgary, June 12, 2019. “Defining the vaginal microbiome with genome-resolved metagenomics: have we opened Pandora’s Box?”

• Dr. Monica Medina, Pennsylvania State University, May 23, 2019. “Microbial-host codevelopment in cnidarian holobionts from jellyfish to corals”

• Dr. David Pollock, University of Colorado, April 10, 2019. “A memory foam model of evolutionary mechanics: entropy and epistasis drive molecular evolution”

• Dr. Ross Waller, University of Cambridge, UK, March 28, 2019. “Global mapping of protein subcellular location illuminates the function and evolution of apicomplexan cells”

• Dr. Stephanie Spielman, Rowan University, NJ, February 28, 2019. “Possibilities, pitfalls, and practical consequences of model selection procedures in phylogenetics”

• Dr. Chris Ponting, The University of Edinburgh, October 19, 2018. “Finding function in noncoding RNAs and noncoding variants”

• Dr. Eva Nowack, Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf, October 3, 2018. “Gaining control over a bacterial endosymbiont – The long way from endosymbiont to organelle”

• Dr. Maureen O’Malley, University of Bordeaux/University of Sydney, July 26, 2018. “(Re)conceptualizing the last eukaryotic common ancestor”

• Dr. Bui Quang Minh, The Australian National University, July 19, 2018. “GHOST: Recovering historical signal from heterotachously-evolved sequence alignments”

• Dr. Derek Skillings, University of Pennsylvania, July 13, 2018. “The ecology of holobionts”

• Dr. Matt Field, James Cook University, Australia, July 4, 2018. “Comparison of predicted and actual consequences of missense mutations: implications for personalized medicine”

• Dr. Ying Taur, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, NY, May 10, 2018. “Gut microbiome dynamics in the world of bone marrow transplantation”

• Dr. Rosie Redfield, University of British Columbia, May 8, 2018. “Do bacteria have sex?”

• Dr. Aaron King, University of Michigan, April 19, 2018. “Pertussis resurgent: why incidence is rising and why the accepted explanation is both compelling and wrong”

• Dr. Marlene Snyder, Acadia University, January 11, 2018. “The hidden signature of rDNA evolution in our genome”

• Dr. Laura Hug, University of Waterloo, November 23, 2017. “Accessing microbial diversity and function from contaminated environments”

• Dr. Marie-Claire Arrieta, University of Calgary, October 26, 2017. “Gut microbial eukaryotes: A missing link in microbiome studies”

• Dr. Harmit Malik, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, September 20, 2017. “Genetic conflicts shape meiosis, centromeres and speciation”

• Dr. Elliott Sober, University of Wisconsin-Madison, July 27, 2017. “Darwin’s phylogenetic reasoning”

• Dr. Maureen O’Malley, University of Bordeaux, July 20, 2017. “Microbes and mind control: the gut-brain connection in light of microbiome research”

• Dr. Conor Meehan, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Belgium, July 13, 2017. “Phylodynamics of pathogenic mycobacteria”

• Dr. James Brown, GlaxoSmithKline, USA, June 5, 2017. “Human-microbe interactions in drug discovery”

• Dr. Alyson Santoro, University of California, Santa Barbara, May 10, 2017. “Microbial adaptation to the open ocean: Insights from the Thaumarchaeota”

• Dr. Cory Bishop, St. Francis Xavier University, December 8, 2016. “Greening the embryo: an enigmatic algal-salamander symbiosis and how genomics can help”

• Dr. Purificacion Lopez-Garcia, Universite Paris-Sud, November 22, 2016. “New constraints and old questions on the origin of eukaryotes”

• Dr. David Moreira, Universite Paris-Sud, November 21, 2016. “The origin of plastids”

• Dr. Alberto Kornblihtt, University of Buenos Aires, September 28, 2016. “Chromatin and transcriptional elongation regulate alternative splicing”

• Ms. Jen Wood, La Trobe University, August 29, 2016. “Putting the ecology into microbial ecology”

• Dr. Maureen O’Malley, University of Bordeaux, July 7, 2016. “Bottom-up microbiome research, and its implications for holobionts”

• Dr. Nathaniel Comfort, Johns Hopkins University, June 23, 2016. “Origins of the RNA world” (Academic Lecture), and “Play-Doh Republic: Controlling Human Evolution, From Ancient Greece to the Age of CRISPR” (Public Lecture; June 24, 2016).

• Dr. Toni Gabaldon, Centre for Genomic Regulation-Barcelona, June 6, 2016. “Mitochondria and the origin of eukaryotes”

• Dr. Jason de Koning, University of Calgary, May 5, 2016. “Modelling the population genetics of molecular evolution”

• Dr. Ashley Shade, Michigan State University, April 7, 2016. “Tales of rarity and disturbance: the interplay of community structure and dynamics”

• Dr. Betul Kacar, Harvard University, March 16, 2016. “Tempus fugit: Design, construction and evolution of ancestor-descendant hybrid organisms in the laboratory”

• Dr. Jerry A. Coyne, February 23, 2016. “Faith versus fact: The incompatability of science and religion” (Public Lecture)

• Dr. Jeffrey Thorne, North Carolina State University, December 7, 2015. “Incorporating disease data and interlocus gene conversion into evolutionary inference”

• Dr. Erin Bertrand, Dalhousie University, December 2, 2015. “The role of cobalamin in diatom molecular physiology and interactions with bacteria: implications for Southern Ocean productivity”

• Dr. Laura Parfrey, University of British Columbia, August 17, 2015. “Eukaryotes in the mammalian gut”

• Dr. Michael Dietrich, Dartmouth College, August 6, 2015. “DNA evolution and the multi-model regress in molecular systematics”

• Dr. Thomas Richards, University of Exeter, July 30, 2015. “Horizontal gene transfer and the evolution of osmotrophic phenotypes”

• Dr. Maureen O’Malley, University of Sydney, July 18, 2015. “From correlation to causation in microbiome research”

• Dr. Matt Ashby, Taxon Biosciences Inc., San Francisco, May 21, 2015. “Exploring information content of 16S rRNA gene profiles with the goal of developing commercial products”

• Dr. Sven Gould, Heinrich-Heine-University of Dusseldorf, May 14, 2015. “Green slugs: plastid symbiosis in animal cells”

• Jan de Vries, Heinrich-Heine-University of Dusseldorf, May 12, 2015. “Turning back time: the factors that make algae plastids more robust”

• Dr. Martin Blaser, New York University Langone Medical Center, April 9, 2015. “The role of the early life microbiota in host development” (Academic Lecture), and “Missing Microbes and Modern Plagues” (Public Lecture)

• David Quammen, Bozeman, Montana, April 7, 2015. “Ebola and company: The animal sources of emerging viruses” (Public Lecture)

• Dr. Bernard Lemire, University of Alberta, April 2, 2015. “Glutathione metabolism links FOXRED1 to NADH: Ubiquinone oxidoreductase (complex I) deficiency: A hypothesis”

• Dr. Tom Williams, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, January 29, 2015. “New substitution models for rooting phylogenetic trees”

• Dr. Johan Van Limbergen, IWK Health Centre, December 18, 2014. “Pediatric Crohn’s: Genetics to metagenetics: Improving nutritional therapy”

• Dr. Seth Bordenstein, Vanderbilt University, December 2, 2014. “The urge to merge: towards a unified theory of the origin of species”

• Dr. Martin Embley, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, November 20, 2014. “Investigating the origins of eukaryotes: An evolving synthesis”

• Dr. Edward DeLong, University of Hawaii, November 13, 2014. “Marine microbial community dynamics, activity and function: An ‘omics’ perspective”

• Dr. Ronald Numbers, University of Wisconsin, October 21, 2014. “The Maritimes origin of ‘creation science'”

• Dr. Georgina Hold, University of Aberdeen, UK, August 28, 2014. “IBD, the microbiome and beyond”

• Dr. James Brown, GlaxoSmithKline, USA, July 10, 2014. “Human-microbial interactions in drug discovery”

• Dr. Adrian Reyes, University of New Brunswick, June 5, 2014. “Genomic tales of the blue-green plants”

• Dr. Curtis Huttenhower, Harvard University, May 28, 2014. “Identifiability of the human microbiome”

• Dr. Austin Booth, Harvard University, April 17, 2014. “Evolution and the individuality of Fungi and Holobionts”

• Dr. Eric Bapteste, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, March 27, 2014. “Thoughts for a more pluralistic pragmatic approach in evolutionary biology”

• Dr. Carlos Mariscal, Duke University, March 24, 2014. “Evaluating potential evolutionary systems in the universe”

• Dr. Patrick Keeling, University of British Columbia, February 13, 2014. “Symbiosis and genome evolution”

• Dr. Rosie Redfield, University of British Columbia, December 5, 2013. “Do bacteria have sex?”

• Dr. T. Ryan Gregory, University of Guelph, November 14, 2013. “Animal genomes large and small”

• Dr. Xuhua Xia, University of Ottawa, August 15, 2013. “Evolution of the translation machinery”

• Dr. Trevor Lawley, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, U.K., July 25, 2013. “Emergence and global spread of healthcare-associated Clostridium difficile”

• Dr. Maureen O’Malley, University of Sydney, July 18, 2013. “Microbes as model systems”

• Dr. Vamsi Mootha, Harvard Medical School, April 18, 2013. “Comparative mitochondrial physiology”

• Dr. James McInerney, National University of Ireland, December 2012. “Shedding light on eukaryote origins: New approaches and new data”

• Dr. Josh Neufeld, University of Waterloo, July 2012. “Exploring the uncharted microbial frontier through targeted recovery of taxonomic novelty”

• Dr. Maureen O’Malley, University of Sydney, July 2012. “Prokaryote evolution: Is there something special about it?”

• Dr. Chris Field, Dalhousie University, May 2012. “Robustness issues and analysis in molecular evolution”

• Dr. Yuji Inagaki, University of Tsukuba, Japan, May 2012. “The Matryoshka project: research on organelle evolution and phylogenomics of protists”

• Dr. Stephen Montgomery, Stanford University, April 2012. “Genetics of gene expression using next generation sequencing”

• Dr. Marc Robinson-Rechavi, University of Lausanne, February 2012. “Does gene duplication affect evolution”

• Dr. Joel Dacks, University of Alberta, January 2012. “And then there were 5: The discovery of a new adaptin complex helps resolve the evolution of the eukaryotic membrane-trafficking system”

• Dr. Matthew Spencer, Liverpool, U.K., October 2011. “Identifying changes in evolutionary processes using stochastic mapping and covarion models”

• Dr. Kamran Shalchian-Tabrizi, University of Oslo, October 2011. “Eukaryote phylogenomics: closing the gaps in the tree of life”

• Dr. Rob Knight, University of Colorado, September 2011. “Spatial and temporal variability in the human microbiome”

• Dr. Andrew Lang, Memorial University, September 2011. “Gene transfer agents: capturing phage and putting them to work”

• Dr. Elisabeth Tillier, University of Toronto, August 2011. “Coevolution reveals a network of human proteins involved in ciliopathies and cancer”

• Dr. Yuji Inagaki, University of Tsukuba, Japan, August 2011. “Recent progress in placing novel protistan lineages in the tree of eukaryotes”

• Dr. Donald Baird, Environment Canada / UNB, and Dr. Mehrdad Hajibabaei, University of Guelph, August 2011. “Biomonitoring 2.0: A high-throughput genomics approach for comprehensive biological assessment of environmental change”

• Dr. Trevor Lawley, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, U.K., June 2011. “Transmission and evolution of Clostridium difficile”

• Prof. Keith Willison, Institute of Cancer Research, U.K., May 2011. “Analysis of the evolution of the eukaryotic CCT-actin folding system using structural and network biology data”

• Dr. Mary Beth Saffo, Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, December 2010. “Mutualism from parasitic roots: a surprising three-kingdom symbiosis in the marine invertebrate family Molgulidae”

• Dr. David Liberles, University of Wyoming, November 2010. ” A modelling framework for protein sequence evolution”

• Dr. David Roos, University of Pennsylvania, June 2010. “Designing and mining (pathogen) genome databases”

• Dr. Stephane Rombauts, University of Ghent, June 2010. “Annotating a eukaryotic genome nowadays”

• Dr. Bret Larget, University of Wisconsin, May 2010. “A phylogeography of gorilla divergence”

• Dr. Chris Lowe, University of Liverpool, April 2010. “Landscape genetics for free-living microorganisms: genetic, genomic and ecophysiological approaches to understanding spatial diversity in marine protists”

• Dr. David McMillen, University of Toronto, February 2010. “Proof-of-principle disease prevention (in bacteria) through synthetic biology”

• Dr. Graham Bell, McGill University, November 2009. “The genomics of fitness in yeast”

• Dr. John McCutcheon, University of Arizona, May 2009. “Big surprises from small genomes: the unusual genomic properties of bacterial symbionts in sap-feeding insects”

• Dr. Thomas Schwartz, MIT, April 2009. “Taming a monster: toward the atomic structure of the nuclear pore complex”

• Dr. William Hanage, Imperial College London, February 2009. “Hyper-recombination, species, and the acquisition of antibiotic resistance”

• Dr. Peter Gogarten, University of Connecticut, November 2008. “Phylogenetics in light of horizontal gene transfer”

• Dr. Elizabeth Edwards, University of Toronto, September 2008. “Bioremediation metagenomics”

• Dr. Jeffrey Parsons, Memorial University, March 2008. “Classification in science: Toward some unifying principles”

• Dr. Philip Bourne, University of California-San Diego, December 2007. “Evolutionary insights from protein structure”