Molluscs 2022 Keynotes

Stay tuned as we finalise the fantastic lineup on Molluscs 2022! Information will be updated regularly.

 

CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

 Associate Professor Melanie Bishop (Macquarie University)

Professor Bishop is a coastal ecologist with over 15 years of experience researching temperate ecosystems of Australia and the USA. She leads a team at Macquarie University that is uncovering how coastal ecosystems operate and respond to change. Her research has a particular focus on the innovation and evaluation of environmental solutions that create habitat and conserve native biodiversity in degraded seascapes. She co-leads the green engineering working group of the World Harbour Project and the Living Seawalls Program. The impact A/Prof Bishop’s work on environmental management has been recognised with a NSW Scientist of the Year Award, and the Brian Robinson Fellowship from the Banksia Environmental Foundation.

 

 

Professor Cynthia Riginos (The University of Queensland)

Professor Cynthia Riginos is an evolutionary geneticist with wide-ranging interests spanning biogeography, phylogeography, molecular ecology, population genomics, speciation, hybridization, invasive species, and conservation. Overall, her research seeks to understand how marine biodiversity is created, where that biodiversity has accumulated, and how this knowledge can be used preserve biodiversity and the processes that create it in a changing world. She is especially fond of molluscs, reef fishes, and corals but easily distracted by other taxa as well. Cynthia has been at UQ since 2006 and previously held an endowed postdoctoral fellowship in Molecular Evolution & Comparative Genomics at Duke University.

 

 

Dr Kara Layton (University of Aberdeen)

Dr Kara Layton is a marine molecular biologist at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland interested in patterns of diversity in our oceans and how ecological and evolutionary processes shape these patterns. Kara is especially interested in the ecology and evolution of warning colouration and mimicry in nudibranchs, and in the genomic basis of adaptation more broadly. Kara is very passionate about improving genomic resources for molluscs, serving as co-lead of the Molluscan Genomics Interest Group, and in continuing efforts to document global biodiversity. Prior to this, Kara held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Ocean Frontier Institute and Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Nova Scotia.

 

Professor Jan Strugnell (James Cook University)

Professor Jan Strugnell completed her BSc (Hons) at James Cook University before obtaining her DPhil at Oxford University, UK, funded by a Rhodes Scholarship. During her DPhil she used molecular and fossil evidence to investigate phylogenetic relationships and divergence times within cephalopods (octopus, squids, and cuttlefish). Professor Strugnell then worked as a post doctoral research fellow at Queen’s University, Belfast, the British Antarctic Survey, and Cambridge University UK, where she investigated evolutionary relationships within and between Antarctic and deep-sea octopods. She reported the first dated molecular evidence that deep-sea fauna from other ocean basins originated from Southern Ocean taxa. Professor Strugnell is currently Director of the Centre of Sustainable Tropical Fisheries and Aquaculture at James Cook University where she investigates the evolution and function of marine organisms using genomic and proteomic techniques. Her research encompasses both applied and blue skies questions and includes investigation of population differentiation, adaptation, resilience and susceptibility to temperature stress, range shifts and method development for detecting rare and invasive species. She also continues to investigate population and species level molecular evolution in Antarctic and deep-sea taxa in the context of past climatic and geological change.

 

 Dr Suzanne Williams (Natural History Museum, London)

Dr Suzanne Williams is a Principal Research Scientist at the Natural History Museum in London. Her research attempts to identify some of the mechanisms that generate diversity in species-rich biomes and the factors that contribute to phenotypic diversity. She is interested in key innovations that may affect species survival, with a particular focus on colour and vision.  The fabulous and diverse colours and patterns of molluscan shells and brightly coloured echinoderms, and the myriad of different eye morphologies in Mollusca make both these groups excellent models for studies on the evolution of colour, the genetic control of pigmentation, and the evolution and loss of vision. 

Williams has worked at the Natural History Museum since 2001. During that time, she was Head of the Invertebrate Division for five years and President of the Malacological Society of London for three. Prior to joining the Museum, she was employed at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama where she studied snapping shrimp, and before that she worked at the Australian Institute of Marine Science working on population genetics of giant clams.