Professor position at Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics at University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Tenure-track Assistant Professor position within the Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, NC, USA. Details: https://jobs.sciencecareers.org/job/572819/assistant-professor-department-of-bioinformatics-and-genomics/ .

Breaking Isolation November 2021

The next Breaking Isolation online lectures will take place on November 19 – details here.

Breaking Isolation October 2021 event

The next Breaking Isolation online lectures will take place on October 21 – details here.

Curator of Seed Plants at BGBM Berlin

The Botanic Garden and Botanic Museum (BGBM), Freie Universität Berlin, is searching for a full-time, permanent position as a Curator for Seed Plants focusing on flowering plants. Details here.

The deadline for sending application materials is October 18, 2021.

Breaking Isolation – monthly online lectures & conversations

The WHS is excited to announce a new format of online lectures & conversations. Beaking Isolation will take place monthly on the 2nd or 3rd Thursday and be open to all. More information here.

Plant systematist position at UC Berkeley

Plant Evolutionary Biology position as Director of the University and Jepson Herbaria at UC Berkeley to be filled. Closing date 8 November 2021. Details here.

Postdoc on gymnosperm genomics

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOW POSITION IN PHYLOGENOMICS

Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics

School of Public Health

SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University

 

A Postdoctoral Research Fellow position is available in Dr. Sergios-Orestis Kolokotronis’ research group at the Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics in the School of Public Health at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University in Brooklyn, NY. The successful applicant will join a large, collaborative NSF-funded project to disentangle the genome evolution of gymnosperms, the oldest surviving lineage of seed plants. Three of the four extant gymnosperm lineages contain species which Darwin termed “living fossils.” These have been present since the Devonian Era and have survived an incredible range of climatic changes, mass extinction events, and adaptation challenges. The genomes of almost all the gymnosperms are extremely large and complex and have been somewhat refractive to genomic characterization as a result. Through the use of nanopore sequencing, transcriptomics, and epigenetics, we have been characterizing the genomes of these species, asking questions on evolutionary radiations and genome resilience. In this project, we interact with the genome assembly and annotation group, and contribute to orthology assessment. We investigate gene family evolution by adopting macroevolutionary phylogenetic methods, phylotranscriptomics, as well as natural selection scans. Our wider interests draw from population genetics, phylogenetics and community ecology, using bioinformatics  and computational biology to understand organismal diversification and adaptation across landscapes and time scales. Our group is located in the new Public Health Academic Building on the SUNY Downstate campus in Central Brooklyn. We interact with a diverse group of health research investigators in the Institute for Genomic Health, and through our affiliations in the School of Public Health and the Division of Infectious Diseases in the College of Medicine. Our lab is outfitted with an Illumina NovaSeq 6000 instrument for high-throughput sequencing, and we have been expanding our HPC capacity on site and on the cloud. HPC access is also available at partner institutions through the PI. More information can be found at http://kolokolab.org and https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=u3i_xH4AAAAJ&hl=en.

Candidates should have a doctoral -or equivalent- degree in life or computational sciences. A training background in bioinformatics, computational biology, molecular evolution and comparative genomics is required. A keen interest in plant biology and infectious disease systems is desirable. The successful candidate must be capable of working independently in an interdisciplinary, diverse, collaborative environment, and have strong analytical, quantitative, and English writing skills, evidenced by scholarly peer-reviewed publications. In addition to formal collaborations with our partner institutions in this project (CSHL, NYBG, NYU, AMNH, JHU, Purdue, NY Plant Genomics Consortium), opportunities exist to branch out in research on genomic epidemiology of infectious and chronic diseases (funded by NIH and NSF), grant proposal writing, mentoring of students, and teaching.

Salary is commensurate with experience. Start date is ASAP. Applications should include in this order: 1) a Statement of Research Interests, 2) a CV, 3) two (2) manuscripts, and 4) the contact information of 3 referees in a single PDF file emailed to sok@downstate.edu with this Subject line “Postdoc-NSF Plants”. Referees should be notified that they might be contacted.

SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University is an affirmative-action, equal-opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, creed, age, disability, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, familial status, pregnancy, predisposing genetic characteristics, military status, domestic violence victim status, criminal conviction, and all other protected classes under federal or state laws. Women, minorities, veterans, individuals with disabilities and members of underrepresented groups are encouraged to apply. If you are an individual with a disability and need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application process, or in order to perform the essential functions of a position, please contact Human Resources at 718-270-3025.

Norman Platnick – 1951 – 2020

Norman I. Platnick passed away on 8 April 2020 after a tragic accident.

Norm was a world-authority on spiders and prolific scientist, Curator Emeritus at the American Museum of Natural History, an influential figure in phylogenetic theory, past president of the Willi Hennig Society, and a long-time member of the society.

An obituary led by AMNH curator Lorenzo Prendini can be downloaded here.

Peter Hovenkamp – 1953–2019

Peter Hovenkamp passed away unexpectedly in July 2019. For a full obituary see here.

Peter was an active, long-time member of the WHS, published 14 articles on Cladistics primarily in historical biogeography, served as Associate Editor of Cladistics from 2002 to 2004, and was the organizer of Hennig XIX in Leiden in 2000.