Workshop on Quantitative Evolutionary Biology, 2014

QEvolution2014, a workshop on quantitative evolutionary biology, was held from September 14-21 in Sirince, Izmir province, Turkey. The site is a few kilometers from the ancient Greek city of Ephesus, where Heraclitus once stated that everything changes and nothing stays still — a defining characteristic of the process of evolution. And indeed the workshop venue, Nesin Mathematics Village, stirred the intellectual creativeness of the 43 participants from all over the world in order to understand evolution with models and genome data.

Keynote lectures by Aida Andres, Nick Barton, Thomas Lenormand and Nadia Singh on the topics of population genetics, molecular evolution and evolutionary modeling were complemented by seminar talks by young researchers. The afternoons were reserved for group projects, for which the participants collaborated on topics as diverse as landscape transcriptomics, the study of epistasis in real biological systems, the evolution of gene regulation, and population genomics. At evenings, the keynote lecturers gave informal talks about their scientific careers, which provided opportunity for students to ask questions about career choices and life as a scientist. The outcome of the QEvolution2014 workshop was remarkable in both scientific and social context. For selected photos from the workshop, please see Photos.

We thank Aida Andres, Nick Barton, Thomas Lenormand and Nadia Singh for their superb keynote lectures, all young researchers for their seminar talks and leading the group projects, and all the other participants for their contributions. We thank the Nesin Mathematics Village for hosting us in their wonderful environment and organizational support. We are also grateful to the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB), the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), and the American Society of Naturalists (ANS) for financial support. Last but not least, we thank the members of the Ecology and Evolution Network of Turkey (Eco-Evo-Turkey) for their general supports.

Organizing Committee: Hannes Svardal, Mehmet Somel and Murat Tugrul

>> OLD HOMEPAGE

Understanding evolution with models and genomes…

These are exciting days for evolutionary biology. Sequencing costs are dropping rapidly and it has become feasible to obtain genome data from multiple individuals. At the other end of the spectrum, over the last 100 years a mature body of population genetic theory has emerged — most of it developed under a notorious lack of data to test the hypotheses. While many classical theoretical results have proven invaluable in the analysis of genome data, new theoretical approaches are more needed than ever, to find our way through the plethora of data to gain insight into natural evolution.

In this spirit, we want to bring together researchers and graduate students studying aspects of natural evolution from different perspectives. In particular, we want to promote the exchange (and foster collaboration) between scientists working with genome data and others doing modelling. Students should get an overview over the state of the art in several fields of evolutionary biology and learn to develop their own scientific ideas by pursuing collaborative short projects.

The workshop will take place from September 14-21, 2014 in the Mathematics Village — a perfect venue for such scientific/educational meetings — located near Izmir (western Turkey). The main body of the workshop will consist of keynote lectures by

Aida Andres (MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig),
Nick Barton (IST-Austria, Klosterneuburg),
Thomas Lenormand (CEFE/CNRS, Montpellier),
Nadia Singh (North Carolina State University, Raleigh, — note: substitute for Pleuni Pennings),

as well as group projects developed by students under supervision of young scientists. There will also be various short lectures and seminars during the workshop.

The application deadlines: