News

2. December 2013 12:55

Research Networking Programme CONGENOMICS - Spring School announcement

A spring school entitled "Landscape genetics in transition to landscape genomics: challenges and opportunities to explore NGS data in a spatially explicit context" is organised the 23-29 March 2014, Bertino, Italy.

This event is organised by Prof Ettore Randi (National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, Italy)  & Dr. Aritz Ruiz-Gonzalez (University of the Basque Country, Spain)

Landscape genomics is an exciting and rapidly growing discipline that combines genome-wide patterns of genetic variation, large environmental data sets and spatial statistical methods, to improve our understanding of both species ecology and ecological adaptation. This spring school aims to provide an updated discussion of landscape genetics analysis in the new genomic era, guided by experts in genomics, spatial statistical analyses, and population genetics. It will include an assortment of conceptual, methodological and applied contributions, followed by hands-on training in order to provide an overview of novel approaches for analysing the environmental context of genomic variation.

Audience

The Spring school is aimed at early-career researchers (PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty who wish to gain training in this area) who have some background knowledge in population genetics and landscape genetics but who have an interest in improving their skills with regards to the analysis of the environmental context of genome-wide genetic variation obtained from novel NGS data. The spring school will have a limited number of participants (ca. 30) and lectures (ca. 5).

Aim and Objectives

This school aims to provide an updated discussion of landscape genetics analyses in the new genomic era, guided by experts in genomics, spatial statistical analyses, and population genetics. It will include an assortment of conceptual, methodological and applied contributions, followed by hands-on training in order to provide an overview of novel approaches for analysing the environmental context of genome-wide genetic variation.

The school will provide an excellent opportunity to introduce young scientists (PhD students and postdocs) to the complex field of landscape genomics and familiarise them with the application of novel analyses from different disciplines that merge within this novel field.

The specific objectives of this course are:

1) Promote better understanding links between the novel genomic information and spatially explicit analysis, in order to facilitate interdisciplinary communication and education in the new emerging field of landscape genomics

2) Provide an update of the current state of the landscape genetics field and the major challenges and opportunities by the incorporation NGS data.

 3) Explore recent analytical advances in NGS of non-model species and gain experience about data collection, production and analysis strategies in population genomics.

4) Provide hands-on training for analysing the environmental context of genetic (neutral and adaptive) variation through spatial statistic and simulation modelling using the most recent methods on landscape genetics/genomics.

5) Address current research challenges and explore new opportunities to improve future landscape genomics applications, and positively contribute to the future growth of this promising field.

For more information please click here.