Talks & Posters

February 2025

The Institute of Molecular Biology at Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, invited me to talk about my research at the departmental seminar. I presented my latest findings about the mechanisms of sexual behavior plasticity in the butterflies.

December 2023

I organized a symposium called : The Evolution of Invertebrate Sensory Ecology and Behavior; at the 2023 Asia Evo Conference, happening at the National University of Singapore. We were honored to have Lars Chittka and Mark Elgar doing fascinating invited talks, together with great talks from all contributing speakers. The symposium was a great success. I also took part to the organization and running of the conference.

July 2023

I was invited to present the yellow plasticity work (paper here) at the Biology of Butterflies conference in Prague, Czech Republic. Lots of great research shared there, by fascinating, passionate and nice people. A very good experience.

July 2022

I was at the Lisbon Neuroethology 2022 (in person) to present my latest findings about the neuro-molecular mechanisms of sex pheromone learning in female butterflies. Great conference, lots of nice neuro work in a diversity of species.

December 2021

I presented the work that we recently published in Proceedings B at the Neuroscience Singapore conference. I did a flash talk (5 minutes only! Challenging but fun) about how the hormone 20E likely affects the expression of the yellow gene in the developing pupal brains, which in turn, affects the males courtship behavior as adults.

April 2021

Fellow colleagues Elena Bollati, Mrinalini and I organized the first Women in Academia workshop inviting all women from the Department of Biological Sciences. Sarah Huggett, Business Development Director, Open Science Solutions for Asia-Pacific at Elsevier, presented a very interesting - and shocking - report about the unequal gender distributions in research participation, career progression and perception across the globe. Experienced and early career female researchers from the Department shared the ups and downs of their Academic journey. We use this safe space to discuss the issues of gender disparities in our professions, share our frustrations, and propose solutions. The event had a very positive reception, and we were proud of the motivating impact it had on the audience.

August 2019

I had the opportunity to take part to the first Butterfly Genomics Workshop organized by Marjo Saastamoinen and Vicencio Oostra (University of Helsinky) at Herrankukkaro, Finland. This was a great meeting with positive spirits, constructive attitude, and fruitful discussions about future genomics projects involving collaborations between our butterfly research teams.

The workshop was followed by the Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB, organized in Turku, Finland, info here). I had the chance to get selected to do a presentation of my work about sex pheromone learning in butterflies among ~1500 participants. Most presentations were streamed and recorded, and are available at the following link: https://rajulive.fi/stream/eseb/.

Watch my presentation here! 👉🏻

June 2018

At the Biology of Butterflies conference, held in Bengalore, India, I organized a symposium entitled "Sensory Ecology of Butterflies and Moths", during which i also presented my work about sex pheromone learning in B. anynana. I was very lucky to meet nice and talented experienced and young researchers from the butterfly community. More info - and stunning pictures! - about BOB2018 can be found here. Notice also the beautiful butterfly illustration created by Antónia who won the BOB 2018 logo competition!

Earlier participation

2017. I presented a poster entitled: Early exposure to new sex pheromone blend changes mate preference of females and their offspring, at the Joint meeting of the 33rd annual meeting of the International Society of Chemical Ecology and 9th meeting of the Asia-Pacific Association of Chemical Ecologists, in the beautiful Kyoto, Japan.

2017. I presented a poster about the Phenotypic plasticity in sex pheromone production in a butterfly. It was in Singapore, at the 18th International Congress of Developmental Biology, Singapore. Poster

2015. Every year, the NUS Department of Biological Sciences organized meetings for members to share their research. I represented the Monteiro Lab, and shared my project about The evolution of pheromone recognition systems. I won the best presentation prize!

2014. I presented preliminary results about the pheromone production plasticity on a poster at the 31st International Society of Chemical Ecology Meeting, Urbana-Champaign, USA.

The same year, Emma Despland, my former post-doc supervisor (Concordia University, Montreal, Canada) presented our work on the role of monoterpenes in white spruce - spruce budworm interactions at the 15th international symposium on insect-plant relationships in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.

2013. I presented a poster about the role of waxes and needle anatomy in the spruce resistance to the spruce budworm at the Center for Forest Research Colloquium in Montebello, Canada.

2012. I had the chance to do an oral presentation of my PhD work at the 37th SQEBC meeting in Montréal, Canada. It was about how symbiont affect aphid defensive behaviours against parasioids.

2010. I did an oral presentation of my PhD work about the evolution of parasitoid populations facing the symbiont-mediated resistance of their hosts at the 16th European Meeting for PhD Students in Evolutionary Biology (EMPSEB) in Wierzba, Poland.

The same year, together with 2 PhD students from the lab, we organized the 1st National Meeting of the Graduate Students from the French INRA 'Plant Health and Environment' Department. It was 3 days of very good oral and poster presentations made by the PhD students and post-docs from all over France, in a informal and friendly environment. A great success!

2009. I produced my first ever research poster about parasitoid population genetics (some preliminary PhD work), that i presented at the 12th ESEB Congress in Turino, Italie.