Keynotes
Theme1: Cell biology, biochemistry, and physiology
Chair 1, Ida van der Klei, NL
Chair 2, Gregory Jedd, Singapore
Chair 3, Marcio Rodriques, Brazil
Keynotes
Kaustuv Sanyal, India
Kaustuv is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (ASM, USA), JC Bose National Fellow and Professor of Molecular Mycology at the JN Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore. The major focus of his research is to understand the mechanism of chromosome segregation using various fungi, both pathogenic and non-pathogenic, as model systems. He is also interested in the mechanism of genome indexing in unicellular organisms by histone variants. He has been awarded the prestigious Tata Innovation Fellowship and National Bioscience Award by the Department of Biotechnology (India), is an elected fellow the Indian National Science Academy (New Delhi), Indian Academy of Sciences (Bangalore, India), the National Academy of Sciences (Allahabad, India) and a nominated member of the Faculty of 1000 (F1000Prime), UK. He is a visiting professor at the Osaka University, Japan. Currently, he leads a vibrant group of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, and actively collaborates with many research groups across the world.
Meritxell Riquelme, Mexico
Meritxell is a Research Professor and Chair of the Department of Microbiology at the Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education of Ensenada (CICESE), Baja California, Mexico, where she has been on the faculty since 2004. She obtained a BA degree in Biology at the University of Barcelona, Spain. She received a MSc degree in Plant Pathology and a PhD in Microbiology from the University of California, Riverside. During her PhD thesis in S. Bartnicki-Garcia’s lab, she investigated the role of the Spitzenkörper in hyphal morphology and growth. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, in the lab of L. Casselton, where she worked on the receptor and pheromone mating type genes of Coprinopsis cinerea. Her current research focuses on understanding basic aspects of hyphal morphogenesis in fungi. By combining advanced microscopy and molecular biology she investigates the biochemical role and secretory routes of vesicles involved in the polar apical growth of hyphae of Neurospora crassa. Additional research interests have led her to study the ecological distribution of the human pathogen Coccidioides spp., a fungus that causes Coccidiodomycosis or Valley Fever in the semi-arid regions of Baja California. More recently she has studied the fungal diversity of deep-sea sediments of the Gulf of Mexico.
She is a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences. In 2018 she received the B. O. Dodge award for her contributions to the Neurospora research community and in 2019 she was elected Fellow of the Mycological Society of America. She is editor of the journals Fungal Genetics and Biology, The Cell Surface, Communications Biology, and Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology. Previously she was editor of Fungal Biology. She has served in the Mycological Society of America (MSA) as member of the Karling Lecture Committee (2005-2008, chair 2007-2008), of the Genetics and Cell Biology Committee (2008-2010, chair 2009-2010), and as councilor for Cell Biology/Physiology (2014-2016). She served as member of the Neurospora Policy Committee (2008-2012), the Fungal Genetics Policy Committee (2013-2019), the International Fungal Biology Conference Steering Committee (since 2014), and the Executive Committee of the International Mycological Association (since 2014).
Theme 2: Environment, ecology and interactions
Chair 1, Lynne Body, UK,
Chair 2, Duur Aanen, NL,
Chair 3, Yu Fukasawa, Japan,
Keynotes
Håvard Kauserud, Norway
Håvard is Professor in Biology at the University of Oslo, and has a broad focus on fungal ecology and biology. One main research avenue has been to assess how fungal communities are affected and structured by environmental variability and change, and how fungal traits influence on community assembly. In most studies, fungal communities have been surveyed by DNA metabarcoding analyses, but he has also used historic sporocarp observations to assess how fungal communities and fungal life-history events changes through time.
Maiko Kagami, Japan
Maiko is a Professor in the Graduate school of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University, Kanagawa, Japan, since April 2018. Her research interests lie in the area of aquatic ecology, examining the dynamics and roles of plankton and microbes in biogeochemical cycling.
Maiko completed her Ph.D. at Kyoto University, Japan in 2002. During her Ph.D., she examined plankton dynamics in Lake Biwa, and found the importance of parasitic fungi infecting phytoplankton. From 2002-2006, she worked as a JSPS research fellow (postdoc) in the Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW), Center for Limnology. She discovered the new material flow via parasitic fungi in aquatic food webs, which was named as Mycoloop after Mycology and her name (Maiko). From 2006 September, she became a faculty member, a lecturer (2006-2012) and associate professor (2012-2018) in Department of Environmental Science, Faculty of Science, Toho University, Chiba, Japan. She continued her research line of aquatic ecology. Maiko has actively collaborated with oversea researchers, particularly Germany and Netherlands. She has been PIs of several Grants-in-Aid (KAKENHI), including those promoting international collaborations. From 2016-2018, she has been a PI of the Fund for the Promotion of Joint International Research (Fostering Joint International Research) and stayed for 1.5 year as a guest researcher at Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB-Berlin) in Germany and at Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO-KNAW) in the Netherlands.
Theme 3: Evolution, biodiversity and systematics
Chair 1, Jos Houbraken, NL
Chair 2, Ester Gaya, UK
Chair 3, Lei Cai, China
Keynote lectures: Toni Gabaldón (Spain), and Jolanta Maria Miadlikowska (USA)
Keynotes
Jolanta Maria Miadlikowska, USA
Jolanta a Senior Researcher at Duke University, Department of Biology. She received her Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Gdansk in Poland in 1999 and completed five years of postdoctoral research at Duke University. She is a systematist interested in biodiversity, taxonomy, phylogenetics and evolution of lichenized Ascomycota, with a special emphasis on cyanolichens from the genus Peltigera and their cyanobacterial photobiont Nostoc. She also studies the eco-evolutionary mechanisms and factors shaping interactions among lichen symbionts using peltigerous lichens as a model system. Her research integrates traditional specimen-based revisionary methods (morphology-, anatomy-, and chemistry-based approaches) and molecular phylogenetic tools, including genomic data, focusing on both the fungal and Nostoc partners. Jolanta is also part of the NSF-funded GoLife project exploring biodiversity, ecological factors and biogeographical patterns in endolichenic and endophytic communities associated with lichens and plants.
Toni Gabaldón, Spain
Toni is a ICREA Research professor, and group leader at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB), and the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre (BSC), and associate professor at the UPF. He leads the comparative genomics groups. His main research interests are in the fields of genomics and evolution with significant contributions to the understanding of how genes, pathways, organisms and communities evolve and function.
Theme 4: Fungal pathogenesis and disease control
Chair 1, Dee Carter, Australia
Chair 2, Martijn Rep, NL
Chair 3, Juan McEwen, Colombia
Keynotes (to be announced)
Theme 5: Genomics, genetics and molecular biology
Chair 1, Miia Mäkelä, Finland
Chair 2, Ronald de Vries, NL
Chair 3: Brenda Wingfield, South Africa
Keynotes (to be announced)
Theme 6: Nomenclature
Chair 1, Tom May, Australia
Chair 2, Konstanze Bensch, Germany
Chair 3, Bevan Weir, New Zealand
Keynote lectures: M. Catherine Aime (USA), and Robert Lucking (Germany)
Keynotes
Catherine Aime, USA
Cathie earned her doctorate in Biology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 2001 under the tutelage of Orson K. Miller and completed her postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom in the lab of Lorna Casselton. She worked for four years as a research molecular biologist with the USDA-ARS, Systematic Botany and Mycology Lab in Beltsville, MD, and for four years as an Assistant and Associate Professor at Louisiana State University. Currently she is Professor of Mycology in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology and Director of the Arthur and Kriebel Herbaria at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN. The Aime Lab researches the systematics and evolution of early diverging basidiomycetes and of tropical fungi. Of particular interest are rust fungi and fungal diseases of tropical tree crops such as coffee and cacao and their socio-economic impacts on rural farmers in developing economies. Cathie is a Fellow of the Mycological Society of America (MSA), the Explorer’s Club, and the Linnaean Society of London, a former officer of the MSA and past Managing Editor of the journal Mycologia, and a Purdue University Faculty Scholar.
Robert Lucking, Germany
Robert obtained his PhD in Natural Sciences from the University of Ulm (Germany) in 1994. After a visiting professorship at the Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife (Brazil), in 1998 and a postdoc to obtain his habilitation in Botany at the University of Bayreuth (Germany) in 2001, he became Collections Manager & Adjunct Curator (Lichens & Fungi) at the Field Museum, Chicago, where he worked until 2015. Since 2015, Robert is Curator (Lichens, Fungi, Bryophytes) at Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum of the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. Robert’s research focuses on tropical lichens (taxonomy, systematics, evolution, ecology, biogeography, uses) and more recently on fungal evolution, systematics, and nomenclature.
Theme 7: Applied mycology
Chair 1, Lene Jesperson, Denmark
Chair 2, Richard Bélanger, Canada
Chair 3, Nancy Keller, USA