SEB Centenary Conference 2023

Professor Eric Schirmer

University of Edinburgh

Eric Schirmer is the Professor of Nuclear Envelope Biology at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute of Cell Biology where he has been since 2004. Among his early research accomplishments was the first demonstration of a direct physical interaction between a chaperone and prion during his PhD at the University of Chicago and determining the nuclear envelope proteome in post-doctoral work at the Scripps Research Institute. Since starting his own laboratory, he discovered that the nuclear envelope proteome is mostly tissue-specific and, among the now roughly 1,000 nuclear envelope transmembrane proteins (NETs) identified from multiple tissues, has shown some to have roles in cell cycle regulation, others in cytoskeletal organization, others in the spatial organization of the genome, others in nuclear mechanosignal transduction, and yet others in nuclear size regulation.  The lab is currently principally focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms behind NET-gene tethering and the consequences of its disruption in muscular dystrophy and lipodystrophy by combining DamID and Hi-C approaches to learn how nuclear envelope tethering of regulatory regions can influence both peripheral and internal gene control.  The lab also investigates intermediate filament lamin mechanics and nuclear envelope interactions with viruses

Aline Probst

Institute of Genetics, Reproduction and Development (iGReD)

No bio provided

Prof. Moussa Benhamed

IPS2

Since my Master degree, I have been interested in the study of the epigenetic regulation of gene expression. I worked on different aspects of this topic. During My PhD, I developed a research topic about the relationships between histone modification and regulation of gene expression during plant development. After that I to switch from the plant to the animal field and I started a post-doc at Pasteur Institute in Paris. After my post-doc, I chose to come back to the plant world. I am leading the Chromosome Dynamics group at IPS2 since 2015 and became full professor in 2018.

Prof. Joanna Bridger

Brunel University

Prof. Joanna M Bridger (Director for Centre of Genome Engineering and Maintenance (cenGEM), Dept of Life Sciences, College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Brunel University London) has been working on spatial chromosome and gene organisation, and behaviour in development, disease, infection, ageing and premature ageing for the last three decades. Presently, her interests have turned to restoring mis-organisation of the cell nucleus and genome in disease and ageing through repurposed and senotherapeutic drugs, studying nuclear motor activities in young and old cell nuclei and the effect of microgravity on genome regulation to understand the impact of space travel. 

Dr. Sara Farrona

University of Galway

Sara graduated in Biology and afterwards joined the IBVF in Seville (Spain) where she received her PhD working in Arabidopsis chromatin remodelling proteins. For her postdoc she moved to Germany to work on plant development regulation by epigenetic processes at the MPIPZ (Cologne) and the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf. Since 2015, Sara leads the Plant Developmental Epigenetics Lab and teaches at the University of Galway.

Prof. Mark Field

University of Dundee

I am currently Professor of Cell Biology at the University of Dundee, UK and Institute of Parasitology, Ceske Budejovice, Czech Republic. Our studies focus principally on the parasitic protozoan Trypanosoma brucei and efforts to exploit genomics and proteomics resources to provide insight into virulence mechanisms, basic cell biology and drug mode of action, with specific interests in protein transport systems and nuclear organisation.

Prof. Robert D. Goldman

Northwestern University

Goldman received his PhD at Princeton and was an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at the MRC Institute of Virology (Glasgow).  He is the Stephen Walter Ranson Professor Emeritus of Cell and Developmental Biology at Northwestern University and a Visiting Scholar in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Harvard University. He has been a visiting scientist at the Cold Spring Harbor and ICRF (London) laboratories and is the recipient of Ellison Foundation Senior Scholar and NIH MERIT awards. He is a Fellow of the AAAS and served on its Board of Directors.  He is Past President and an Inaugural Fellow of the American Society for Cell Biology. At the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole , he served as Director of the Physiology and Science Writers Courses , the Whitman Research Center and as a member of its Board of Trustees. He is a member of the Finnish Society for Sciences and Letters and received the Charles Medal for Scientific Achievement and an Honorary Doctorate from Charles University in Prague.

Prof. Ian Henderson

University of Cambridge

2020-present Professor of Genetics and Epigenetics, Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge

2016-2020 Reader, Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge

2012-2016 Lecturer, Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge

2008-present Royal Society University Research Fellow and Gatsby Resident Fellow, Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge

2004-2008 Postdoctoral Researcher with Professor Steve Jacobsen, University of California, Los Angeles

Prof. Didier Hodzic

Washington University School of Medicine

Didier Hodzic, a ’98 Graduate in biochemistry from the University of Liege (Belgium) is now an Associate Professor in the Department of Developmental Biology at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, MO, USA. For more than 15 years, his research has been focusing on “LINC” (Linkers of the Nucleoskeleton and the cytoskeleton) complexes that consist of interactions between Sun proteins and Nesprins across the nuclear envelope (NE) that position the nucleus and underlie NE mechanical stiffness. More recently, he is mostly focused on Nemp1, a NE protein required for normal erythropoiesis and female fertility in mice.

Dr. Daniel Jost

CNRS and Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon

Daniel is Senior Researcher at CNRS and head of the team 'Physical Biology of Chromatin' at ENS de Lyon (France). In close connection with experimental biology, his group addresses generic or specific biological questions on chromatin and gene regulation by developing physical and computational models, with a particular focus on the spatio-temporal dynamics of eukaryotic chromosomes and the coupling between 3D structure and functions of chromatin.

Dr. Chang Liu

University of Hohenheim

Dr. Chang Liu is a junior professor at the University of Hohenheim. He received his bachelor’s and Ph.D. degrees from the National University of Singapore in 2005 and 2010. From 2010 to 2015, he did his postdoctoral training at Temasek Institute of Life Sciences, Singapore, and Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Germany. Before joining the University of Hohenheim in 2020, he worked as a junior group leader at the University of Tübingen. Dr. Liu’s research falls in the field of structural genomics. Particularly, he is interested in understanding three-dimensional chromatin interactions and chromatin positioning in plants.

Dr. Hannah Long

University of Edinburgh

As a Programme Leader Track (PLT) Group Leader at the MRC Human Genetics Unit at the University of Edinburgh my group leverages our accrued knowledge at the SOX9 regulatory locus, and developed model systems, to investigate how combinatorial enhancer function and 3D genome architecture contribute to gene regulation. Our work will have important implications for understanding how genetic alterations impact normal-range human facial development and can contribute to disease.

Dr. Susan Mango

University of Basel

Susan Mango is an American scientist working in Basel, Switzerland. She was trained at Harvard University (BA), Princeton University (PhD) and the University of Wisconsin Madison/HHMI (postdoc) and has received many awards for her work. Susan Mango has had a long-standing interest in the molecular mechanisms that drive embryogenesis: she discovered pha-4/FoxA as the central regulator of C. elegans foregut development and developed the concept of Organ Selector Genes. Her lab dissected the regulatory logic for foregut gene expression to understand how a selector gene coordinates organogenesis from cell-type specification and differentiation to morphogenesis. Her most recent work focuses on genome organization during development, using both wet bench and computational approaches. In her free time she can be found floating down the Rhine (in summer) or experimenting with Ottolenghi (in winter).

Prof. Davide Marenduzzo

The University of Edinburgh

Davide Marenduzzo is professor of computational biophysics at the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include the biophysics of DNA and chromatin, cell motility, active matter and liquid crystal physics. Davide has coauthored about 250 articles in peer-reviewed journals. Highlights of his research include the discovery of the structure of the blue fog (blue phase III), and the proposal of the bridging-induced attraction leading to the formation of clusters of multivalent DNA-binding proteins. He recently wrote a book on DNA biophysics, "The Physics of DNA and Chromosomes" (IOP, 2018).

Dr. Snezhka Oliferenko

King’s College London

Snezhana (Snezhka) Oliferenko did her doctoral studies with Lukas Huber at the IMP, Vienna. After earning her PhD degree in 2000, Snezhka moved to Singapore to work as a postdoc with Mohan Balasubramanian. Two years later, she established her group at the Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory in Singapore. In 2013, Snezhka moved her lab to King's College London. Today, she is a group leader at The Francis Crick Institute and Professor of Evolutionary Cell Biology at King's. She uses related fission yeast species as a discovery tool to understand how cells organise and remodel their interior during growth and division.

Prof. Ana Pombo

Berlin Institute for Medical Systems Biology, Max Delbrück Centre for Molecular Medicine

Ana Pombo studies 3D genome folding and gene expression in development and disease. After her DPhil at University of Oxford, UK, Ana received a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship and started her lab at the MRC London Institute for Medical Sciences. In 2013, she moved to the Berlin Institute of Medical Systems Biology (BIMSB) of the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin, Germany, where she serves as Deputy Director. Ana received the Robert Feulgen Prize, and was elected member of EMBO and the European Academy of Sciences. She has pioneered Genome Architecture Mapping (GAM) to map 3D genome structure.

Prof. G. V. Shivashankar

ETH Zurich & Paul Scherrer Institute

G.V.Shivashankar is currently a Full Professor of Mechano-Genomics at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zurich. He also heads the Laboratory of Nanoscale Biology at the Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland. He carried out his PhD at the Rockefeller University (1994-1999) and Postdoctoral research at NEC Research Institute, Princeton USA (1999-2000). He was a tenured faculty at the National Center for Biological Sciences, NCBS-TIFR- Bangalore, India (2000-2009) before relocating to the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2010. He was the Deputy Director of the Mechanobiology Institute at NUS (2011-2019) and was the IFOM-NUS Chair Professor (2014-2019) before joining ETH. His scientific awards include the Birla Science Prize in 2006, the Swarnajayanthi Fellowship in 2007, and he was elected to the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2010 and to the EMBO membership in 2019.

Dr Angela Taddei

Nuclear Dynamics Unit at the Institut Curie.

After a PhD Thesis at the Institut Curie in Paris, and a post-doc at the Geneva University  and Friedrich Miescher Institute (2001-2006), she started a junior team at the Institut Curie in 2007 (ERC starting grant 2008). Her team studies the biological and physical determinants of nuclear organization and how this organization impacts the functioning of the genome, with a focus on the regulation of gene expression and the stability of the genome. Since 2015, she has been the director of the Nuclear Dynamics Unit at the Institut Curie.

 

Prof. Jim Murray

Cardiff University

Jim Murray is Professor and Head of School at the Cardiff University School of Biosciences. He has long standing research interests in the plant cell cycle, identifying the D-type cyclin family in plants, and in molecular diagnostics using bioluminescence. After spending 20 years in the Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge where he was Professor of Molecular Biotechnology, he moved to Cardiff University in 2008.  He is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and of the Academia Europaea, and a co-founder of the diagnostics company Lumora Ltd, for which he was named BBSRC Commercial Innovator of the Year in 2012.  

Dr. Veronica Greinensen

Veronica Grieneisen graduated in Physics and masters in Theoretical Physics from the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (2004), Brazil. She then completed her PhD in Theoretical Biolocy cum laude at Utrecht University, working on pattern formation in plants. She started her lab at the John Innes Centre, focussing on cell and tissue polarity, in 2009, being also awarded the Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowhip by the Royal British Society. In 2020 she became a Reader is Systems & Predictive Biology at Cardiff University and now leads, as Course Director a Msc in Big Data Biology to teach and train interdisciplinary skills to biologists. Her current research combines molecular biology to biophysics to dynamical systems theory to understand how multicellular systems process complex environmental information to make distinct developmental and physiological decisions.

Dr. Ross Sozzani

University of Pavia, Italy

Ross Sozzani holds a PhD in genetics and molecular biology and a Master of Science degree in biological science from the University of Pavia, Italy. She is an associate professor and university faculty scholar, in the Plant and Microbial Biology Department at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on the molecular mechanisms that regulate growth and development of multicellular organisms. Her interest is to use large biological data and develop algorithms or models to understand biological systems and relationships at multi-scale level and translate this knowledge to engineering plants with enhanced agronomic function. Currently, she serves as the Director of the Plant Improvement for the NC Plant Science Initiative (, she is the Deputy-Director of the NSF Science and Technology Center for Phosphorus Sustainability (STEPS) and she leads an NSF AccelNet program aimed at accelerate integration of engineering, life science, and agricultural research to prepare the next generation of U.S. researchers for multiteam international collaborations.

Dr. Cranos Williams

North Carolina State University

Dr. Cranos Williams is the Goodnight Distinguished Professor of Agricultural Analytics at North Carolina State University with primary and secondary appointments in the electrical and computer engineering and plant and microbial biology departments, respectively. Dr. Williams also serves as the Platform Director of the Data-Driven Plant Sciences research platform of the North Carolina Plant Sciences Initiative (https://cals.ncsu.edu/psi/) and is the head of the EnBiSys Research Laboratory (https://research.ece.ncsu.edu/enbisys/). He received his B.S. in electrical engineering from North Carolina A&T State University in 2001, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University in 2002 and 2008, respectively. Dr. Williams has developed a highly collaborative, multidisciplinary research program focused on understanding biomolecular pathways associated with plant growth, development, and adaptation. His research lab develops methodologies familiar to other areas of electrical and computer engineering (e.g. computational intelligence, system identification, nonlinear systems analysis and control, and signal processing) to model and predict the impact that genetic and environmental perturbations have on overall plant response. The results from these works will have direct implications on key challenges associated with engineering plants for efficient biofuel production, increased adaptability to changing environments, and improved defense to biotic and abiotic stresses. 

Dr Emma Cavazzoni

Emma Cavazzoni is a PhD student at Exeter University, in Sabina Leonelli’s ERC project “A Philosophy of Open Science for Diverse Research Practice”. 

Emma Cavazzoni completed her master’s in Philosophy of the Social Sciences at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2021. Previously she studied Philosophy at the University of Bologna and at Uppsala University. She worked as a Research Fellow at the Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin and as a Research Assistant at Bocconi University and Bayes Business School. 

Her current project is focused on the impact of data-intensive methods on research, especially on plant science and plant-pest interactions

Dr José M. G. Vilar

Jose M. G. Vilar completed his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Barcelona in 1998. His postdoctoral work at Princeton University and the Rockefeller University focused on multilevel analysis of cellular networks and their integration in the noisy intracellular environment. In 2004, he created and headed the Integrative Biological Modeling Laboratory at the Computational Biology Program of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. His laboratory pioneered the use of computational and mathematical modeling to study biological networks relevant to cancer. In 2008, he joined the Biofisika Institute, a joint center between the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the University of the Basque country, as an Ikerbasque Professor. His current research focuses on the study of biological networks at multiple levels of organization, ranging from molecular interactions to cellular processes to the collective behavior of cell populations.

Dr Megan Leigh Matthews

Assistant Professor , Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois, United States of America

Megan Matthews is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Illinois. Her work involves developing multiscale computational models to explore the impacts of a changing environment on plants and to identify engineering strategies for improving plant development and growth. She has used mechanistic and data-driven approaches to develop models describing plant processes at regulatory, metabolic, and physiological scales. Megan earned her bachelor's, master's, and doctorate in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University.

Prof. Jim Murray

Cardiff University

Jim Murray is Professor and Head of School at the Cardiff University School of Biosciences. He has long standing research interests in the plant cell cycle, identifying the D-type cyclin family in plants, and in molecular diagnostics using bioluminescence. After spending 20 years in the Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge where he was Professor of Molecular Biotechnology, he moved to Cardiff University in 2008.  He is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and of the Academia Europaea, and a co-founder of the diagnostics company Lumora Ltd, for which he was named BBSRC Commercial Innovator of the Year in 2012.  

Prof. James Wakefield

University of Exeter , United Kingdom

James undertook his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at the University of Bristol before learning his trade as a PhD student investigating Drosophila cell division under the tutelage of Jordan Raff, at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge. He carried out a short postdoc with Maurizio Gatti in Rome, studying the male meiotic and brain mitotic divisions in flies, before moving back to Bristol for a further semi-independent postdoc, focusing on human mitotic phospho-proteins with Jeremy Tavare. In 2004 he took up a Lecturer position in the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, where he was also co-ordinator and then Director of the Life Sciences Interface Doctoral Training Centre. He moved to Exeter in 2010 where, alongside his research, he has held the roles of Departmental Director of Education and University Associate Academic Dean for Students. He has been Head of Biosciences since 2017. In addition to his research programme focusing on Drosophila mitosis, he is active in the field of process philosophy of biology and in promoting the use of the wax moth Galleria mellonella as an alternative to rodent models for the study of human disease, recently launching the Galleria Mellonella Research Centre (GMRC).

Dr. Elaine Dunleavy

University of Galway

Dr. Elaine Dunleavy is a Senior Lecturer based at the Centre for Chromosome Biology at the University of Galway, Ireland. Dr. Dunleavy is a cell biologist and geneticist interested in the molecules and machinery that control how cells divide. Her particular research-interest lies in the specification and regulation of centromeres, key chromosomal loci that oversee proper chromosome segregation at cell division. She uses the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as an experimental system to explore such mechanisms in meiosis, the special type of cell division that gives rise to gametes (eggs and sperm), as well as in germline stem cells. Recently, her laboratory has begun to investigate centromere function in bovine oocytes, sperm and blastocysts generated by in vitro fertilisation. Dr. Dunleavy’s research aims to substantially improve our knowledge of the basic principles that govern centromere biology, with implications for fertility, reproduction, and ageing.

Dr. Don Fox

Duke University

Don Fox, Ph.D is an associate professor of pharmacology and cancer biology at Duke University Medical Center (Durham, NC, U.S.A.). He has a B.S. in biology from the College of William and Mary and a Ph.D in biology from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.  Don conducted postdoctoral studies at the Carnegie Institution department of embryology. Since 2011, his laboratory at Duke has studied the role of whole genome duplication (polyploidy) in organ development and injury repair, primarily using the fly Drosophila as a model. More recently, his lab has expanded its focus to include study of tissue-specific interpretation of the redundant genetic code. Don has been recognized for his research accomplishments as a Pew scholar, Basil O’Connor scholar, and American Cancer Society research scholar. His laboratory is currently supported by multiple awards from the U.S. National Institutes of Health.  

Prof. Gohta Goshima

Nagoya University

Talk title: Mitotic cell division in Physcomitrella 

2002: PhD in Biology, Kyoto University (Prof. Mitsuhiro Yanagida) 

2002-2007: Postdoc, University of California, San Francisco (Prof. Ronald Vale) 

2007-2010: Associate professor, Institute for Advanced Research, Nagoya University 

2010-present: Professor, Department of Biology, Nagoya University 

2020-present: Director, Sugashima Marine Biological Laboratory, Nagoya University 

Current research subject: Cell division and microtubule cytoskeleton in plants, macroalgae, and marine yeasts 

Dr. Linda Hanley-Bowdoin

North Carolina State University

Dr. Hanley-Bowdoin has a B.A. in Biochemistry from the University of California-Riverside, a M.Sc. in Biochemistry from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Rockefeller University. She performed postdoctoral research at Cornell University and the Monsanto Company before joining the faculty of North Carolina State University, where she established research programs on DNA replication of plant chromosomes and viral genomes. Her group has collaborated with researchers at NCSU, CSHL, FSU, and UT-Austin to characterize and compare DNA replication timing programs for Arabidopsis, maize and sorghum genomes. She has also extensively studied single-stranded DNA viruses that replicate in plant nuclei using host DNA polymerases. Her group is currently examining virus/host interactions, viral evolution, and disease resistance strategies in cassava, tomato and Arabidopsis pathosystems in collaboration with scientists in Kenya and Tanzania. Dr. Hanley-Bowdoin’s research program has been funded for more than 30 years by grants from NSF, USDA, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and corporate sponsors. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an associate editor for Plant Molecular Biology, and a long-term member of the UNC-Press Board of Governors.  

Dr. Soni Lacefield

Dartmouth College

Dr. Soni Lacefield earned her Ph.D. from MIT in Cambridge, MA, working with Dr. Frank Solomon in the Center for Cancer Research, studying tubulin folding pathways in S. cerevisiae. Dr. Lacefield was a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Andrew Murray at Harvard University, where she worked on meiotic and mitotic chromosome segregation in S. cerevisiae. In 2009, Dr. Lacefield began her independent research career at Indiana University in the Department of Biology. She recently moved to the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth in the Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, where her lab works on meiotic and mitotic cell cycle regulation in budding yeast and mouse. In addition to her research and teaching, Dr. Lacefield currently runs a summer research program for African students, serves as an Associate Editor at the journal Genetics, and is a member of the Board of Trustees for the non-profit organization Afrisnet.  

Prof. Jordan Raff

University of Oxford

Jordan studied Biochemistry as an undergraduate at Bristol University. He studied for his PhD with David Glover in the Department of Biochemistry at Imperial College London, where he first started to work on centrosomes and cell division in the fruit fly Drosophila. He has continued to work in these areas throughout his scientific career, first as a post-doctoral fellow with Bruce Alberts in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, then as a Wellcome or CRUK funded group leader at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge. He moved to the Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford in 2009 to take up the César Milstein Chair of Cancer Cell Biology. He has served as President of the British Society for Cell Biology, on the Council of the American Society of Cell Biology, and Editor in Chief of the not-for-profit Journal Biology Open (published by the Company of Biologists). He is an EMBO member, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Science and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He has always taken a keen interest in promoting the public understanding of science. 

Prof. Arp Schnittger

University of Hamburg

Arp Schnittger is full professor for developmental biology at the University of Hamburg/Germany and vice director of the Institute of Plant Sciences and Microbiology (IPM). The main focus of his research team is the molecular mechanisms that control phenotypic stability and change. In particular, he studies with his co-workers DNA damage response and meiosis.  

He moved to Hamburg in 2014 after having headed the department of cell biology at the Institut de Biologie Moléculaire des Plantes (IBMP) in Strasbourg/France, where he worked from 2007 till 2013. Before moving to France, he led a junior research team at the University of Cologne in collaboration with the Max-Planck-Institute for Plant Breeding Research from 2001 till 2006.   

He studied biology at the University of Tübingen/Germany and the University of Washington in Seattle/USA and received his Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Tübingen in 2001.  

Dr Adele Marston

University of Edinburgh

Adele Marston is a Wellcome Investigator, Professor of Cell Biology and Director of the Wellcome Centre for Cell Biology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on the fundamental mechanisms by which cells reproduce themselves and transmit their genome to the next generation. The goal is to understand why human eggs so frequently carry the wrong number of chromosomes, leading to miscarriages and birth defects. To dissect the molecular mechanisms that sort chromosomes into gametes during the process of meiosis her group use yeast as a model system. More recently, she has begun to study meiosis in eggs from mammalian species, including human. Adele graduated from the University of Oxford with a BA in Biochemistry (1995) and a PhD in Pathology (1999) and carried out postdoctoral work at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She set up her group in Edinburgh in 2005, successively funded by a Wellcome Career Development Fellowship (2005-2011), a Senior Research Fellowship (2011, renewed in 2016) and a Wellcome Investigator Award (2021). Adele is an EMBO Young Investigator (2010), EMBO member (2019) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2022).

Prof. James Wakefield

University of Exeter , United Kingdom

James undertook his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at the University of Bristol before learning his trade as a PhD student investigating Drosophila cell division under the tutelage of Jordan Raff, at the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge. He carried out a short postdoc with Maurizio Gatti in Rome, studying the male meiotic and brain mitotic divisions in flies, before moving back to Bristol for a further semi-independent postdoc, focusing on human mitotic phospho-proteins with Jeremy Tavare. In 2004 he took up a Lecturer position in the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, where he was also co-ordinator and then Director of the Life Sciences Interface Doctoral Training Centre. He moved to Exeter in 2010 where, alongside his research, he has held the roles of Departmental Director of Education and University Associate Academic Dean for Students. He has been Head of Biosciences since 2017. In addition to his research programme focusing on Drosophila mitosis, he is active in the field of process philosophy of biology and in promoting the use of the wax moth Galleria mellonella as an alternative to rodent models for the study of human disease, recently launching the Galleria Mellonella Research Centre (GMRC).

Dr Angharad Jones

Cardiff University, Wales

Angharad is a Future Leaders Fellow based in Cardiff School of Biosciences.  Angharad’s interdisciplinary research focuses on how the plant cell cycle and whole plant development is impacted and modulated by real-world environmental conditions.  Crop yields are measured at the field level, but much of our knowledge of plant development is focused at the cell level.  Angharad’s team is integrating imaging and modelling techniques together with molecular biology to bridge this gap between lab and field.  By linking together different levels of organisation she aims to make better predictive models of plant growth that will lead to new strategies for engineered crops that are more resilient to changeable weather conditions.  She has an active role in promoting plant sciences within the University and the community.

Dr Amanda Amodeo

Dartmouth College

Amanda Amodeo (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Dartmouth College. Her lab seeks to understand how cells and organs make the measurements required to couple growth, cell cycle, and developmental progression. Her lab uses the early cleavage divisions of the Drosophila embryo to study how the changing nuclear to cytoplasmic ratio contributes to cell cycle slowing and zygotic genome activation. They have found changes in chromatin composition during zygotic genome activation and an unconventional role for histones as cell cycle regulators independent of chromatin incorporation. Current work in the lab focuses on understanding how the nuclear to cytoplasmic ratio regulates chromatin states, if the cell cycle regulatory roles for histones extend beyond the early embryo, and how oogenesis generates an egg of the correct size. 

Professor Johannes Overgaard

Aarhus University

Johannes Overgaard earned his PhD (2003) from the Arhus University where he also works as Professor at the section for Zoophysiology. Johannes Overgaard current research is primarily concerned with heat and cold tolerance in insects where he studies the consequences of extreme temperature at the cellular, organ, organismal and population level.

Dr. Michael Berenbrink

University of Liverpool

Michael is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom. He obtained a doctorate in Natural Sciences at Düsseldorf University, Germany, then worked as Assistant Professor at Humboldt University, Berlin, before accepting his current position in Liverpool. Michael’s primary research interests lie in the Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology of Animals, where he uses the vertebrate oxygen transport chain as a model system for studying the evolution of mechanisms of environmental adaptation. He serves on the editorial board of four journals and has delivered over 40 invited presentations across the world.

Prof. Andrew Biewener

Harvard University

Over the past five decades, the SEB has provided an exciting and critically important forum for sharing ground-breaking research on the aerodynamics of invertebrate and vertebrate animal flight, animal flight performance in relation to migration, and the morphology, physiology and dynamics of muscle contractile function that provides the mechanical power output for flight. Highlights of novel research discoveries underlying animal flight performance will be briefly reviewed and linked to the neuromuscular function of flight muscles that power vertebrate flapping flight. High-speed video, robotic models, particle imaging of fluid flow, computational fluid dynamics modelling, and in vivo methods for recording muscle function have all been key approaches to gaining critical insight into the aerodynamic mechanisms and the muscle power output requirements for flight. Newly emerging techniques and technologies provide the opportunity to explore animal flight performance in the field, offering a rich set of future discoveries linked to the ecology of our changing world. 

Prof. Leslie Buck

University of Toronto

The mammalian brain only survives a few minutes without oxygen, but the turtle brain of freshwater painted and red-eared slide turtles survives many hours to months without oxygen.  The foundation of our current knowledge of the underlying mechanisms of this ability lies at the confluence of four remarkable scientific careers in the 1960’s.  At Duke University the famed comparative physiologist Knut Schmidt-Nielsen established his research laboratory and attracted the attention of Peter Hochacka, Donald Jackson and Peter Lutz.  Jackson made the first calorimetric measurements of a reversible metabolic arrest in the Schmidt-Nielsen Lab in 1966, subsequently Lutz demonstrated the maintenance of ion gradients in anoxic turtle brain and Hochachka explored mechanisms of metabolic arrest and formulated the metabolic and ion channel arrest concepts.   “On the shoulders” of these individuals I have advanced my own research on anoxia-tolerant turtle brain and have uncovered evidence of ion channel arrest and in a special case of enhanced ion channel activity.  I will give an overview of this evidence and show recent data showing ion channel arrest in turtle liver cells.

Dr. Andreas Fahlman

L'Oceanogràfic

In 1940, Per Scholander published his seminal paper “Experimental investigations on the respiratory function in diving mammals and birds” that summarized much of the understanding about the physiological responses and adaptations of species that breath-hold dive. While some of the physiological responses had been described earlier, Scholanders treatise provided a unifying summary of the cardiorespiratory responses while diving. This included the dive response, with a reduced cardiac output conserving blood oxygen to the central organs. Scholander also proposed that the anatomy of the respiratory system would aid in alveolar collapse and cessation of gas exchange at depth. Development of miniature-electronics that could measure and record physiological function (i.e., Physio-logging) allowed pioneering field studies by several researchers, e.g Gerry Kooyman. These studies showed that although the dive response was present in free-ranging animals, it was highly variable and seldom as pronounced as during forced dives, suggesting that dive adapted animals have a conditioned capacity to vary heart rate. Physio-logging also provided evidence of alveolar collapse in seals and dolphins, where alveolar compression occurs at shallow depths while complete atelectasis much deeper. The combination of these past studies provided evidence for the “selective gas exchange hypothesis” which provides an explanation how breath-hold diving species manage gases while diving, and how man-made disturbance and climate change may alter this ability. This presentation will provide a summary of the work that followed Scholanders publication and present our current knowledge 83 years later. 

Prof. Andrea Fuller

University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

Andrea Fuller is a professor in the School of Physiology at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Her primary research focus is in the area of wildlife conservation physiology, with two main themes: understanding the physiological plasticity available to mammals to cope with climate change; and improving the physiological welfare of mammals during conservation management practices. Since 2007 she has directed the Brain Function Research Group, which carries out research in the fields of sleep, fever, pain, thermal and wildlife conservation physiology. She has published over 140 peer-reviewed publications, hosted eight postdoctoral fellows, and supervised 37 Doctoral and Masters students. She is the Chair of the Commission on Comparative Physiology for the International Union of Physiological Sciences and an associate editor of the journal Conservation Physiology. In recognition of her contribution to science in South Africa, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa in 2020.

 

Dr. William Joyce

Spanish National Cardiovascular Research Centre

William Joyce received his BSc in Zoology from the University of Manchester (United Kingdom) and PhD in Bioscience from Aarhus University (Denmark). During his doctorate he studied the regulation of cardiac filling in reptiles and fishes. In his postdoctoral career he continued to investigate the evolution of the heart and cardiac proteins at the University of Ottawa (Canada), University of Manchester, and Aarhus University. He now works as a senior postdoc at the Spanish National Cardiovascular Research Centre (through a contract held with CIBER; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red) studying sarcomeric proteins, adrenergic signalling, and cardiac metabolism.

Prof. Philip Matthews

University of British Columbia

Besides teleost fish, only one other group of aquatic animals has evolved the ability to control their buoyancy using compressible gas-filled bladders: the larvae of the phantom midge (Chaoborus). By the early 1900s, studies had revealed that fish release oxygen from haemoglobin in their blood to inflate their swim bladder, and shrink it by absorbing oxygen back into their blood. While the similarity between the function of the swim bladder of a fish and the four tiny air-sacs of a Chaoborus larva had long been noted, the absence of haemoglobin in these near-transparent insects suggested the presence of a very different buoyancy control mechanism. August Krogh tackled this problem in 1911, ruling out oxygen secretion but failing to identify the actual mechanism. Developments in knowledge and techniques across a range of disparate fields in the intervening 100 years have made it possible to finally characterise the unique buoyancy control system of Chaoborus. 

Prof Julian Dow

In terms of species, insects are the most diverse Class of life. They are able to exploit a remarkable range of ecological niches, and their survival depends on their ability to regulate their internal enviroments in the face of extreme challenges, which are addressed with modifications on the same basic body plan. This talk will review some of the diversity of osmoregulatory strategies in Class Insecta, with particular reference to the structure and function of the Malpighian (renal) tubules and the alimentary canal. 

Dr. Rachael Morgan

University of Bergen

I am an ecophysiologist based at the University of Bergen, Norway. I am interested in understanding how fish can cope during extreme climate-related events (e.g. severe hypoxia, and heat waves). In my current postdoc I am combing fieldwork with lab experiments to investigate how large daily fluctuations in oxygen affect the physiology and behaviour of coral reef fish.

Dr. Pauline Provini

Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle

How do animals move and interact with their environment? How do they achieve critical functions like locomotion, feeding, or communication? Biomechanics seeks to answer these questions by combining experimental observations with mechanical and mathematical modelling, allowing researchers to gain insights into the mechanics of animal movement. Over the years, musculoskeletal biomechanics, studying how muscles, bones, joints, and tendons work together to produce motion, has made significant conceptual leaps, often linked to technical and modelling advances. In this talk, I will highlight some of the significant historical milestones in biomechanics, and showcase pioneering figures who paved the way for the latest cutting-edge research. By understanding their ideas and methods, we can appreciate how they have helped to shape our understanding of animal movement and more generally of the evolution and diversity of animal form and function, a central theme at SEB for the past decades. 

 

Prof. Suvi Ruuskanen

University of Jyväskylä

Dr. Suvi Ruuskanen is currently an Associate Professor in Environmental Physiology at the Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Jyväskylä. Her research is at the intersection of environmental sciences and ecological, physiological and molecular ecology.  Dr. Ruuskanen is broadly interested in the mechanisms underlying organismal adaptation to environmental changes, including the role of transgenerational (incl maternal and paternal effects) and developmental plasticity. Her research currently has a strong focus on  host-microbiome interactions, to understand the causes and consequences of variation in gut microbiome, from molecular mechanisms to evolutionary patterns. These questions are being addressed in avian study systems.

Prof. Holly Shiels

University of Manchester

The work of Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley at the Physiological Laboratory in Cambridge and the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth revolutionised our understanding of cell excitability and garnered them the 1963 Nobel Prize. Their legacy is our comprehension of how voltage-gated ion channels give rise to action potentials both experimentally and mathematically. Experimentally they developed the voltage-clamp technique and established the field of electrophysiology.  By utilising giant axons from squid their work forms a classic example of the August Krogh principal.  Mathematically, the equations they derived from their experimental work represents the first quantitative description of electrical excitability in cells and set the foundation for the coupling of experimental and computational science.  The Hodgkin-Huxley model still forms the basis of computational modelling of excitable cells today.  This talk will reflect on these historic contributions and then demonstrate their relevance for some of the most important questions in physiology and biology today: from what goes wrong with propagation of excitation at environmental extremes to the integration of life across levels of biological organisation

Prof. Trish Shulte

University of British Columbia

This centenary year for the Journal of Experimental Biology is also the 50^th anniversary of the publication of “Strategies of Biochemical Adaptation”, which is the first of several books by Peter Hochachka and George Somero that were instrumental in founding the field of comparative biochemistry. In developing this new field, they took the philosophy and approaches of comparative physiology and applied them to questions at the biochemical level, resulting in a deeply integrative discipline that attempts to understand organismal function from the molecular level upwards. In this talk, I will look back at the fundamental insights developed by Hochachka and Somero and the key questions that they posed, and highlight how recent advances in genomics and genome editing mean that we are now poised to address these questions in exciting new ways.  

 

Dr. Laura Stidsholt

Aarhus University

All animals rely on sensing to survive. Approximately one in five mammals use echolocation as their primary sensory modality to navigate and locate food in total darkness. As small, nocturnal fliers, echolocating bats have a high metabolic rate that must be sustained by targeting small and often highly agile prey. Since Spallanzani's pioneering experiments in the 18th century, scientists have been intrigued by how bats hunt using only their voice and ears. Throughout the 20^th century, bat echolocation and sound perception were explored intensively, particularly through captive behavioural and neurophysiological experiments that laid the foundation for exploring animal cognition and sensory perception, thanks to the work of Donald Griffin. Recent technological advancements, including radio tracking, GPS, and sensor loggers, have facilitated direct measurements of the movement, physiology, foraging, and fine-scale sensory-motor behaviour of wild bats. These developments have allowed us to understand how bats use echolocation to capture enough food to maintain their high energy requirements in the wild, and how their sensory and foraging behaviour is adapted to a changing world. With this talk, I will trace the evolution of bat echolocation research from Spallanzani to the present day, and explore how bats, which evolved their biosonar in a silent and dark world, are facing challenges from human encroachment in natural ecosystems, which are affecting their ability to maintain a positive energy balance in a modern world. 

 

Prof. Jamie Voyles

University of Nevada, Reno

How do epidemics end? A transition away from the outbreak phase of a disease can occur following the emergence of highly pathogenic infectious agents. Yet the mechanisms that underpin such transitions remain obscure. We have been investigating shifts in disease dynamics in the lethal disease amphibian chytridiomycosis by focusing on host recoveries in the amphibian assemblages of Central America. The fungal pathogen that causes chytridiomycosis, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), spread through Costa Rica and Panama in a wave-like pattern approximately two decades ago, causing mass mortality events and severe declines in many amphibian species. However, some host populations that survived initial outbreaks are persisting and even rebounding despite Bd infection. We have found that infection patterns are heterogenous across populations, species, and geographical space. In some species, Bd prevalence and intensity of infection is now low, yet the pathogenicity of Bd isolates is still high, causing 100% mortality in naive hosts in controlled laboratory experiments. This finding suggests that shifts in host resistance and/or tolerance to Bd infection may be important mechanisms underpinning amphibian recoveries and ecological resilience. We also expect that focusing research efforts on other host traits, including innate and adaptive immune responses, the cutaneous microbiome, life history characteristics, and behaviour may offer promising avenues for further investigation to understand the mechanisms underpinning shifts in disease dynamics across spatial-temporal gradients. 

Prof. Tobias Wang

Aarhus University

No bio provided

Prof. Rod Wilson

University of Exeter

No bio provided

Dr Tom Daniel

Two groundbreaking papers published in 1954, led by Andrew Huxley, laid out the theory of the mechanism of muscle contraction based on molecular interactions between myofilaments in the sarcomere that cause filaments to slide past one another during muscle contraction.  These and subsequent papers established the classic “sliding filament hypothesis”.   In the subsequent decades of research, new computational and experimental approaches have allowed us to understand this complex multi-scale process, from force generation to energy delivery at the molecular, cellular and tissue levels of organization.  The vast swath of research in this domain underlies our understanding of animal movement, human disease, and biomimetic technologies.  And, as it turns out, new data suggest that the filaments not only slide, they stretch and dilate as well.  These additional axial and radial motions have profound implications to how energy may be stored and how substrates may be delivered via diffusion and fluid motions.  Both historical and current approaches of this fundamental biomechanical process will be explored, with a focus on the complex dynamics of the myofilament lattice and new ideas emerging about multi-scale physics. 

David Evans

I also lead the Cell Biology section of the SEB. I am Emeritus Professor and member of the Plant Cell Biology Research Group at Oxford Brookes University. The SEB has been central to my research career over more than 40 years - I gave my first public talk as a PhD student at an SEB meeting and have been an active SEB member ever since. For the last 20 years, I have specialised in the study of the plant nuclear envelope, nuclear structure and dynamics and have led, co-organised and contributed to the development of this area in the SEB.

Dr Verena Kreichbaumer

Oxford Brookes University

I am a plant cell biologist and protein biochemist with expertise in the structure and function of the plant endoplasmic reticulum, membrane proteins and auxin biosynthesis.

I carried out my PhD work at the Technical University of Munich where I studied the nitrilase pathway in maize auxin biosynthesis and the maize tryptophan synthase complex. A short-term postdoctoral position at Oxford Brookes allowed me to expand my expertise to ER and Golgi as well as acquiring skills in live cell imaging. I further investigated the targeting of tail-anchored proteins as a postdoc at Sheffield Hallam University. Here, I also applied total internal reflection ellipsometry to quantify protein-membrane interactions on native plant membranes and human cell lines.

I took up a position at Oxford Brookes in 2012 investigating the role of reticulon proteins in ER tubulation and viral trafficking, followed by work on producing the methanotroph pMMO enzyme complex in plants. In 2017, I was appointed as the Vice Chancellors Research Fellow in Biology at Oxford Brookes and promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2020.

My current projects include structure and dynamics of the ER, ER exit sites, methane detoxification, the ER-nuclear envelope interface and investigating plant glycosylation for the production of therapeutics.

Prof. Jim Murray

Cardiff University

Jim Murray is Professor and Head of School at the Cardiff University School of Biosciences. He has long standing research interests in the plant cell cycle, identifying the D-type cyclin family in plants, and in molecular diagnostics using bioluminescence. After spending 20 years in the Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge where he was Professor of Molecular Biotechnology, he moved to Cardiff University in 2008.  He is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and of the Academia Europaea, and a co-founder of the diagnostics company Lumora Ltd, for which he was named BBSRC Commercial Innovator of the Year in 2012.  

Dr. Liana Acevedo-Siaca

Michigan State University

Liana Acevedo-Siaca is a postdoctoral researcher at the Michigan State University-Department of Energy (MSU-DOE) Plant Research Laboratory (PRL). Her current research focuses on understanding how plants respond to fluctuating light conditions within the context of other abiotic stresses, such as heat. Furthermore, her work aims to connect the fields of plant physiology and breeding by characterizing natural variation, understanding the limitations to photosynthesis, and exploring the amenability for improvement of photosynthetic traits through selection to work towards more resilient crops.

Prior to joining MSU, Acevedo-Siaca completed her graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she focused on plant physiology and photosynthesis in rice in collaboration with the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) Project. During graduate school she spent time at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines as a U.S. Borlaug Fellow in Global Food Security. Most recently, Acevedo-Siaca worked at CIMMYT as an Associate Scientist in the Wheat Physiology division of the Global Wheat Program.

Dr Stefan Kepinski

University of Leeds

Stefan Kepinski is a Professor of Plant Development and Head of the School of Biology at the University of Leeds. His research spans the biophysical basis of auxin perception to the understanding of the control of growth angle in plants. His group’s work has led to new ways to increase the sustainability of crop production, including patented technologies for the optimisation of root system architecture. Through this work, he has become engaged in the problem of the decarbonisation of agriculture and the wider food system. He is Associate Director of the Global Food & Environment Institute where he leads research on agriculture and environment through the Leeds Net Zero Agriculture Living Lab. He is also on the Executive Leadership Team of the AgriFood4NetZero Network Plus project (www.agrifood4netzero.net), which aims to envision plausible scenarios for a net zero agri-food system and provide practical pathways to achieving the most optimal of these alternative futures.

Prof. Stephen Long

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Abstract:

“Photosynthesis in the SEB yesterday, today and tomorrow - from molecular to global sustainability solutions”

Photosynthesis is the most important process on the planet.  Indeed, it has made much of what the planet is today.  Directly or indirectly it provides all of our food, and fuels almost all ecosystems.  The SEB has been party to much of the discovery of how it works and advances in its measurement and analysis from molecules to landscapes.  Presidents, Medalists, Woolhouse Lecturers and PEPG have been and are major contributors, as I will illustrate.  Discovery and technical progress has expanded in two directions.  1) Growth in food demand is outstripping growth in production, reversing this situation is critical to avoiding increasing starvation and expansion of agriculture into tropical forests.  For our major crops improving photosynthesis appears the remaining option for increasing genetic yield potential.  Elucidation of the underlying gene expression networks and metabolic flux analysis are guiding engineering, including editing, of amounts and forms of key proteins to improve photosynthetic efficiency under global change.  This has already led to on farm demonstrations of increased yield and promises many more.  2) The need to understand sinks for CO₂ has motivated improved measurement and analysis of photosynthesis at scale.  This is critical to identifying sinks and the engineering of managed systems for improved sequestration.  Afforestation and planting of other sustainable productive perennials are providing means to offset emissions.  These though could be greatly enhanced by engineering and breeding increased photosynthetic efficiency, especially if combined with combustion carbon capture and storage.    Going forward photosynthesis may never have been more important.

Biography:

Steve Long holds the Ikenberry University Chair of Plant Biology at the University of Illinois. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Member of the US National Academy of Sciences. His photosynthesis research spans from carbon metabolism to field crops; with a focus on breeding and bioengineering for sustainable yield increases under global change. Last year his teams in silico and subsequent in vivo engineering of photosynthesis led to a more than 25% increase in soybean yields in replicated field trials.  He is Founding and Chief Editor of the journals Global Change Biology and Global Change Biology-Bioenergy, and has given briefings on global food security and on bioenergy to the President at the White House, the Vatican and Bill Gates.  He first joined the SEB as an undergraduate, is a past convener of Plant Environmental Physiology Group and session organizer, and is a member of the Plant Section Committee.  He was the 2008 Woolhouse Lecturer. 

Dr. Sylvain Giroud

Vetmeduni Vienna & University of Vienna

Sylvain Giroud is an independent researcher (assistant professor) at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna in Austria. He is an evolutionary ecophysiologist and his research focuses on the mechanisms enabling animal species to cope with environmental fluctuations. He has a particular interest for how heterothermic endotherms especially hibernators respond to environmental change and global warming.

Dr. Julia Nowack

Liverpool John Moores University

Julia Nowack is an associate professor (Reader) at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK. Her research area lies at the interface of ecology, evolution and physiology and focuses on energetical adaptations by individual animals that are of evolutionary importance, mainly in the context of environmental change, anthropogenic disturbance and global warming.

 

Dr. Jérémy Terrien

Natural History National Museum

Jérémy Terrien is an associate professor at Natural History National Museum in Paris, France. His research focuses on understanding how animals face predictable or unpredictable fluctuations in environmental conditions, including ambient temperature and food availability, and how these responses change across individual’s age.

 

Prof. Andrea Fuller

University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

Andrea Fuller is a professor in the School of Physiology at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Her primary research focus is in the area of wildlife conservation physiology, with two main themes: understanding the physiological plasticity available to mammals to cope with climate change; and improving the physiological welfare of mammals during conservation management practices. Since 2007 she has directed the Brain Function Research Group, which carries out research in the fields of sleep, fever, pain, thermal and wildlife conservation physiology. She has published over 140 peer-reviewed publications, hosted eight postdoctoral fellows, and supervised 37 Doctoral and Masters students. She is the Chair of the Commission on Comparative Physiology for the International Union of Physiological Sciences and an associate editor of the journal Conservation Physiology. In recognition of her contribution to science in South Africa, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa in 2020.

 

Dr Caroline Gilbert

Professor, National Vet School of Alfort , EnvA

Caroline Gilbert is a Professor of Ethology at the National Vet School of Alfort (EnvA). Her research focuses on physiological and behavioural adaptations of organisms facing environmental constraints. She has been investigating the energetic benefits of social thermoregulation on various models (rabbits, penguins, elephant seals) and in particular how individuals modulate their temperature (body and surface) and their behaviour to better respond to environmental conditions. Her research also focuses on how individual strategies and coping styles could be related to personality traits, determining individual variability in behavioural and physiological adaptations. She conducts research on company animals (dogs, cats) to better understand how they adapt to our human-based environment.

Dr. Katharina Ruthsatz

Technical University of Braunschweig

Dr Katharina Ruthsatz is an assistant professor and junior research group leader at the Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany. Her research interests encompass a broad range of aspects related to conservation physiology and ecotoxicology of ectotherms in general and amphibians in particular. Using experimental and theoretical approaches, she investigates how environmental stressors associated with global change affect vital rates such as growth, development, metabolism, and survival and how animals might cope with novel environments and challenges by exhibiting phenotypic plasticity and flexibility.

Dr Ofir Levy

Senior Lecturer, Tel Aviv University

I was awarded my PhD in December 2010, completed a postdoc position in 2018, when I began a Senior Lecture position in Tel Aviv University. My work aims to explore the biological consequences of climate change. In particular, in response to changing climates, organisms are shifting distributions, phenotypes, and life histories, and I believe that to understand these contemporary shifts and to predict future ones, we need a mechanistic understanding of how environmental, physiological, and ecological factors limit and drive individuals and populations. To this end, my students and I combine bottom-up and top-down approaches that integrate climatic, physiological, and ecological data. Specifically, we have developed a state-of-the-art modeling approach to downscaling regional climate data to a scale relevant to organisms (meters to centimeters). Then, by incorporating ecological and physiological models, we explore how and why ecological systems are likely to respond to climate change