This schedule is subjected to last-minute changes. 

​

​Talks and posters will be presented in the main theatre of the Maths Building, Mile End campus, QMUL. The hub MB-201 is available throughout the whole conference as quiet room (contact the organisers to have access to it).

​

Thursday, August 29th 2024

09:30-12:00 Registration
09:30-10:00 Coffee break
10:15-10:30 Welcome adress

10:30-12:30 Session A: AI and machine learning
Sponsored by DERI
10:30-10:40 Sponsored Talk A: Greg Slabaugh
chair: Nick Goldman

10:40-11:05 Talk 1: Manolo Perez, Imperial College London, “PhyloCNN: Improving tree representation and neural network architecture for deep learning from phylogenies in phylodynamics and diversification”

11:05-11:30 Talk 2: Charlotte West, EMBL-EBI, “Detecting Positive Selection using Machine Learning”

11:30-11:55 Talk 3: Siu Pui Chung, QMUL, “Pg-Gan-Mosquito: Demographic inference of anopheles mosquitoes to measure spread of resistance mutation”

11:55-12:20 Talk 4: Nathan Skene, Imperial College London, “Predicting cell type-specific epigenomic profiles accounting for distal genetic effects”

12:20-14:00 Lunch break

14:00-15:40 Session B: phylogenetics
chair: Mario Dos Reis Barros

14:00-14:25 Talk 5: Sandra Álvarez-Carretero, UCL, “Application of Bayesian model selection to distinguish between species diversification timing hypotheses”

14:25-14:50 Talk 6: Manel Ait El Hadj, St Andrews, “Integrating traits in Polymorphism-aware phylogenetic Models to better model speciation”

14:50-15:15 Talk 7: Tomas Flouri, UCL, “Efficient Bayesian Inference Under the Multispecies Coalescent with Migration”

15:15-15:40 Talk 8: Rui Borges, University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, “The rarity of mutations and the inflation of bacterial effective population sizes”

15:40-16:00 Coffee break

16:00-17:15 Session C: population genetics
chair: Richard Nichols

16:00-16:25 Talk 9: Haoyu Chen, Johannes Kepler University Linz, “Testing SNP data under overdispersion”

16:25-16:50 Talk 10: Ulises Bercovich, University of Copenhagen, “Measuring linkage disequilibrium in structured populations with applications in pruning and clumping”

16:50-17:15 Talk 11: Weini Huang, QMUL, “Measures of genetic diversification by integrating bulk and single cell data”

17:15-18:30 Poster Session with BGI stall

Posters:

Sabia Asghar, Hasselt University, “A numerical study of point forces in a multi-dimensional elastic model for tumors”

Raju Kumar, QMUL, “CD8+ T cells are inflammatory and clonally expanded in the early stage of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) fibrosis”

Richard White, QMUL, “An aggregated gene co-expression network from a large zebrafish mutant transcriptome dataset”

Omar Ruelas, St Andrews, “Adding Morphological Traits to the Species Tree inference under a Polymorphism-Aware Phylogenetic Models approach”

Alistair Dunham, Wellcome Sanger Institute, “Iterative deep learning library design for exploring fitness landscapes”

Joel Winterton, EMBL-EBI, “Benchmarking with pandemic-scale phylogenetic datasets”

Janeesh Baur Kansal, QMUL, “Evaluating How the Meaning of Identical by Descent Varies with Mutation and Recombination Rates”

​
19:00 Conference Dinner at Tayyabs

​

Friday, August 30th 2024

09:00-10:40 Session D: genomics and more
chair: Andreas Futschik

09:00-09:25 Talk 12: Jackie Rao, University of Cambridge, “VICatMix: variational Bayesian clustering and variable selection for discrete biomedical data”

09:25-09:50 Talk 13: Bikash Bhandari, EMBL-EBI, “Borrowing from evolution: A generalised approach for protein sequencing”

09:50-10:15 Talk 14: Vinny Davies, University of Glasgow, “ViMMS: Improved Real-Time Data Acquisition Methods for Metabolomics Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) Experiments”

10:15-10:40 Talk 15: Carolin Kosiol, St Andrews, “Polymorphism-aware models in RevBayes: Disentangling Balancing Selection and CG-biased gene conversion”

10:40-11:00 Coffee break

11:00-12:40 Session E: phylogenetics
Sponsored by Peer Community In
11:00-11:10 Sponsored Talk B: Matteo Fumagalli, Peer Community In
chair: Paschalia Kapli

11:10-11:35 Talk 16: Svitlana Braichenko, University of Edinburgh, “Phylogenetic methods meet AI”

11:35-12:00 Talk 17: Ruolin Wu, University of Bristol, “Origin of angiosperms: quantitative integration of fossil records and the molecular clock”

12:00-12:25 Talk 18: Samuel Martin, EMBL-EBI, “Algebraic Invariants for Inferring 4-leaf Semi-directed Phylogenetic Networks”

12:25-12:50 Talk 19: Ziheng Yang, UCL, “On the probability of inferring the correct phylogeny”

12:50-14:10 Lunch break

14:10-15:50 Session F: population genetics and more
chair: Weini Huang

14:10-14:35 Talk 20: Andreas Futschik, Johannes Kepler University Linz, “Detecting selection with multi-locus Wright-Fisher models.“

14:35-15:00 Talk 21: Bingxin Lu, University of Surrey, “Cell-cycle dependent DNA repair and replication unifies patterns of chromosome instability”

15:00-15:25 Talk 22: Fajia Sun, EMBL-EBI, “Dynamic adaptive sampling for metagenomic samples”

15:25-15:50 Talk 23: Richard Goldstein, UCL “Evolution of indel hotspots promotes SARS-CoV-2 evolvability”

15:50-16:00 Closing and future event

​