Speakers

Dr. Raghavendra Gadagkar is the DST Year of Science Chair Professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. He studies evolution of social behaviour using eusocial insects using Ropalidia marginata, a common wasp found locally, as a model.

Dr. Richard Lenski is a distinguished professor of microbial ecology at Michigan State University. He studies the dynamics of evolution using E. coli and digital organisms. Using these two systems, he aims to understand the genetic and ecological determinants of fitness.

Dr. Barbara Rosemary Grant is a senior research biologist at Princeton University. Her research focuses on the maintenance of phenotypic variation and the process of speciation in natural environments. Together with Dr. Peter Grant, she has been studying Darwin’s finches on the Galápagos islands since 1973.

Dr. Peter Raymond Grant is a pioneer ecologist and evolutionary biologist at Princeton University. He, together with Dr. Rosemary Grant, studied Darwin's finches on the Galápagos Islands for 40 years to gain a deeper understanding of the evolution of this iconic group of birds.

Dr. Scott Vernon Edwards is the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Organismal and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and the Curator of Ornithology at Harvard's associated museum, the Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Dr. Mewa Singh is an Indian primatologist, ethologist, and conservation biologist. He is a Distinguished Professor for Life at the Biopsychology Department, University of Mysore, Karnataka, and SERB Distinguished Fellow. Dr. Singh's research centers on primate social behavior, including conflict resolution, cooperation, inequity aversion, and food-sharing.

Dr. Daniel Kronauer is based at the Rockefeller University, USA. He studies social evolution and behavior within complex societies. His lab uses an integrative approach to understand how natural selection shapes the evolution of insect societies and how social life is regulated at the level of genes, brains, individuals, and colonies.

Dr. Amitabh Joshi is an Indian evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and a Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR). He heads the Evolutionary Biology Laboratory at JNCASR and is known for his studies on genetics and population ecology.

Dr. Brendon E. Boudinot is Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at Institut für Zoologie und Evolutionsforschung, Jena. His research interests are evolution and ecology approached from the perspective of systematics. He integrates morphological and molecular phylogenetics, paleontology, traditional comparative morphology, and contemporary anatomical technology to answer historical evolutionary questions.

Dr. Madeleine Beekman is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney. Her research interests can be grouped into five main themes: conflict and cooperation, evolution of the dance language in the genus Apis, decision-making in decentralised systems, inter- and intragenomic conflict, and the evolution of cognition.

Dr. Fernando Gonzales Candelas, is a Professor of Genetics at the University of Valencia since 2006 and the head of the “Evolution and Health” Research Unit at the Institute for Integrative Systems Biology UV-CSIC (I2SysBio) at the same university. He works on the molecular evolutionary epidemiology of hepatitis C virus (HCV), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and other pathogenic bacteria.

Dr. Tracey Chapman, is a Professor at the University of East Anglia. She is an evolutionary geneticist interested in understanding how reproductive traits evolve and function at a mechanistic level. Specifically, she is interested in evaluating the potential of sexual selection and sexual conflict for driving evolutionary change and in understanding the underlying mechanisms involved using fruit flies as a model system.

Dr. Kazuki Tsuji is a Professor at the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan. His major discipline is evolutionary ecology of social insects. His current interests are theoretical and empirical approaches to combining theories of life history strategy, community ecology, and social evolution. Sociobiological studies on conflict within insect societies have also been a focus of his studies.

Dr. Tristan Long, is an Associate Professor at Department of Biology, Wilfrid Laurier University. His area of research includes evolutionary genetics, behavioural ecology and experimental evolution.

Dr. Guha Dharmarajan, is based at the Krea University . His research interests are ecological and evolutionary dynamics of disease in natural populations.

Dr. TNC Vidya, is a Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR). Her area of research is vertebrate behaviour and socioecology, specifically the socioecology of Asian elephants.

Dr. Geetanjali Mishra, is an Associate Professor at the University of Lucknow. Her research interests are behavioural ecology and evolution, specifically, reproductive strategies and sexual selection in ladybirds.

Dr. Krishnapriya Tamma, is an Assistant Professor at the Azim Premji University. She is an ecologist with an interest in tropical forest ecology and evolution. Currently, her research focuses on monitoring forest resilience in northeast India, and avian frugivore community structure.

Dr. Qudsia Tahseen, is a Professor of Zoology at the Aligarh Muslim University. Her area of research includes taxonomy and developmental biology of terrestrial and aquatic nematodes.

Dr. Anand Krishnan, is an Assistant Professor in IISER Bhopal. He is a trained comparative neurobiologist, with an interest in birds. He uses birds and bats as a way to understand the context, function and physical principles underlying biological sound in tropical environments.