COORDINATOR
Alfried P. Vogler
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Alfried holds the Chair in Molecular Systematics, jointly at Imperial College and the Natural History Museum. His research links collection-based biodiversity studies with novel molecular and genomic approaches, to address fundamental questions about speciation, genome evolution, ecological diversification and ecosystem function. He is adapting latest sequencing technology and genomics to the challenges of studying complex biodiversity samples, for example to characterise biomes such as tropical forests and the deep soil, or the gut content of insects and vertebrates.
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GROUP MEMBERS
Ana Riesgo
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Ana has a proven track record of successful research into the evolution of marine invertebrates, including evolution, genomic diversity, phylogeny, population genetics and gene expression in sponges, annelids, cnidarians, platyhelminths, and echinoderms. She has an excellent background in the kind of research proposed here, and will provide excellent support and oversight for this project.
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Natalie Cooper
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Natalie is a successful researcher in macroecology and macroevolution. Her research focuses on broad scale patterns of biodiversity, and uses a variety of data including morphology, phylogeny, fossils and large databases. She is a recognized expert in phylogenetic comparative methods and the statistical computing software R.
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Thomas J. Creedy
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Thomas is a Postdoctoral Researcher as part of the iBioGen consortium. He is a molecular ecologist focusing on bioinformatic and and analytical techniques, and his postdoctoral work involves collaboration with other members of the consortium to build and disseminate evidence-driven research pipelines for exploring Island Biodiversity using ecological genomics and phylogenetics. He completed his PhD at Imperial College London, studying tropical forest canopy arthropod communities using metabarcoding, holds an MRes in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Research from Imperial College (Silwood Park) and a BA in Biological Sciences from the University of Oxford.
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The Natural History Museum (NHM) is an international leader in taxonomy and biodiversity research. Team members have used genomic technologies in particular to overcome the ‘taxonomic impediment’ to biodiversity assessment and biomonitoring by developing efficient methods for evolutionary and taxonomic characterisation of mixed-specimen samples as those from mass-trapping efforts. NHM is also a major academic institution for training of biodiversity researchers. The NHM team members have huge teaching experience at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and have mentored numerous PhD students and postdocs, and therefore are well equipped to lead Work Package 2. The NHM team will further contribute their expertise in genomic technologies to Work Package 3 (for the unification of lab and bioinformatics protocols) and to Work Package 4 (for the integration of genomics with biodiversity theory).
