The science of evolutionary and population genetics will be the topic of conversation at a seminar hosted by Initiative for Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Studies (IBEST) Sept. 5.The Institute for Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Studies fall IBEST Seminar series features experts discussing their research and interacting with University of Idaho students and faculty. Researcher Graham Coop will lead the seminar.
Larry Forney, IBEST director, said this kind of seminar series is notable for bringing the best and brightest researchers to discuss their work with the university community.
“We have this seminar series and it is all about different aspects of evolutionary biology and we invite people from across the country,” Forney said. “It’s a pretty elite program in the sense that we only have five speakers but each one is a big name in the field that we bring in.”
Forney said that traditionally faculty and staff have organized the series. But a few years ago the institute decided to pass the responsibility over to Ph.D. candidates in the IBEST program, he said.
“We sort of turn it over to them,” Forney said. “And say ‘who would you like to invite?’ and they go out and get into the literature, invite people they know from their own research, or people they’d like to meet, or people who are big stars in their field, and they can invite them to campus and they host them and organize their visit and basically run the show.”
Matt Pennell, a Ph.D. student in bioinformatics and computational biology organized the upcoming seminar. Pennell said he decided to invite Graham because of his astounding research in population genetics.
“Dr. Graham Coop is a very young researcher, but he is probably the preeminent population geneticist of his generation,” Pennell said. “And what population genetics is, is using DNA sequences to make inferences regarding the history of populations.”
Pennell took an unexpected approach to invite Coop and used his online networking abilities and social media to connect with Coop.
“Graham Coop is very active on Twitter, as am I, and so I have corresponded with him quite a bit on Twitter in different ways,” Pennell said. “He is just very active in social media and I was able to contact him through that, and I think that is cool.”
Forney said one of the most evident advantages of the IBEST seminar series is creating a positive presence for UI on a national level by uniting researchers with common interests who may not have been linked otherwise.
“There’s a lot of people who have never been to Idaho and they don’t know where Idaho is and they are very pleasantly surprised when they come and they meet the people who are here, the students and the faculty and research staff,” Forney said. “And they go back and tell other people so it has helped us build sort of a national reputation as a pretty interesting place with a lot of smart people doing good research.”
Pennell said after attending seminars in previous years, he thinks it would be beneficial for students to attend the seminar because they could learn something entirely new, or expand on a topic they are already interested in.
The seminar will take place at 12:30 p.m. Sept. 5 in the Engineering/Physics building, room 214.
Amber Emery can be reached at [email protected]