Workshop Announcement -- Taming the BEAST

Dates: May 31 to June 5, 2020 (Deadline for registration is March 1).

Place: Oberägeri, Switzerland

We are happy to announce that registration is now open for the June 2020 edition of our summer school “Taming the BEAST”.

Phylogenetics and phylodynamics are central topics in modern biology. Phylogenetic inferences reconstruct the evolutionary relationships between organisms, whereas phylodynamic inferences reveal the dynamics that lead to the observed relationships. These two fields have many practical applications in disciplines such as epidemiology, developmental biology, paleontology, ecology and even linguistics. However, phylogenetics and phylodynamics are complex and fast-evolving fields. As such, inference tools are not easily accessible to researchers who are not from a computational background.

Taming the BEAST is a summer school focusing on the BEAST2 software and consisting of a mix of invited talks, lectures and hands-on tutorials by leading and renowned experts in the field (including several of the core developers of BEAST2). The aim of this summer school is to equip participants with the skills necessary to confidently perform their own phylogenetic and phylodynamic inferences in Bayesian settings, while providing them with a firm grasp of the theory behind those inferences. Participants are also highly encouraged to bring their own datasets along and to engage with the organisers and speakers to address any problems specific to their own datasets/analyses.

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN. We welcome applications from graduate students and early-career scientists in the life sciences. Preference will be given to applicants who are not from a computational background and applicants who have already collected/assembled a dataset that they need to analyze.

Invited speakers:

  • Alexei Drummond (University of Auckland)
  • Tanja Stadler (ETH Zurich)
  • Remco Bouckaert (University of Auckland)
  • Denise Kuehnert (Max Planck Institute)

Registration Fee: 900 CHF (Registration fee includes accommodation and meals).

For more information please visit the summer school website: https://www.bsse.ethz.ch/cevo/taming-the-beast/overview-2020.html

For information on previous workshop programs, tutorials etc. please visit https://taming-the-beast.org.

We hope to see you there,

The Taming the BEAST organising team