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20th International Bioinformatics Workshop on Virus Evolution and Molecular Epidemiology
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The University of the West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago Sunday, August 9 - Friday, August 14, 2015
Dear colleague,
We are announcing the organization of the international workshop on Virus Evolution and Molecular Epidemiology (VEME) in 2015, hosted by the University of the West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago on behalf of our main sponsor the International Committee for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. The workshop is co-organised by the University of Leuven (Belgium) and the J. Craig Venter Institute (USA).
We plan to organize a ‘Phylogenetic Inference’ module that offers the theoretical background and hands-on experience in phylogenetic analysis for those who have little or no prior expertise in sequence analysis. An ‘Evolutionary Hypothesis Testing’ is targeted to participants who are well familiar with alignments and phylogenetic trees, and would like to extend their expertise to likelihood and Bayesian inference in phylogenetics, coalescent and phylogeographic analyses (‘phylodynamics’) and molecular adaptation. A ‘Large Dataset Analysis’ module will cover the more complex analysis of full genomes, huge datasets of pathogens including Next Generation Sequencing data, and combined analyses of pathogen and host. Practical sessions in these modules will involve software like, PHYLIP, PAUP*, PHYML, MEGA, PAML or HYPHY, TREE-PUZZLE, SplitsTree, BEAST, MrBayes Simplot and RDP3.
We recommend participants to buy The Phylogenetic Handbook as a guide during the workshop, and to bring their own data set.
The abstract and application deadline is March 15th
Selections will be made by the beginning of May.
The registration fee of 850 Euro covers attendance, lunches and coffee breaks. Participation is limited to 30 scientists in each module and is dependent on a selection procedure based on the submitted abstract and statement of motivation. A limited number of grants are available for scientists who experience difficulties to attend because of financial reasons.
Selection criteria: (in order of importance)
Quality of the abstract: abstracts will be reviewed and priority will be given to applicants who are first author on the abstract.Letter of motivation: how urgent/important is your need for training?Each module is preferably restricted to 1 participant from the same lab.Priority will be given to participants from countries with limited resources.
Grant criteria: (in order of importance) Priority to countries with limited resources.Ranking according to the abstract quality.
Additional information and application forms are available on our website: http://www.rega.kuleuven.be/cev/veme-workshop/2015
We are confident that this course meets the needs of many molecular virologists and epidemiologists, and hope we can assist you in your search for training in Bioinformatics methods.
Yours sincerely,
Christine Carrington, Karen Nelson and Annemie Vandamme Organizers of the workshop
Contact: veme2015@sta.uwi.edu