Virtual VEGA Symposium 2021:
VEGA, Viral EcoGenomics & Applications
Hosted by the JGI, the goal of this series of online seminars is to bring together a “Viral Ecogenomics” community to foster discussion on how to best capture and characterize uncultivated viruses, understand the role of viruses in natural ecosystems, and functionally explore viral genetic diversity toward innovative biotechnological and industrial applications.
Register Here for the VEGA online series
The deadlines for registration and abstract submission have passed.
Agenda and Speakers
Go here to see the full VEGA 2021 agenda.
Keynote Speakers
- Edward Holmes, The University of Sydney
Other Confirmed Speakers
- Shannon Bennett, Cal Academy of Sciences, San Francisco
- David Pride, University of California, San Diego
- Rachel Whitaker, University of Illinois
- Natalya Yutin, NCBI NIH
- Mart Krupovic, Institut Pasteur
- Karen Maxwell, University of Toronto
- Mohammad ‘Monir’ Moniruzzaman, Virginia Tech
- Simon Roux, DOE Joint Genome Institute
- Jens Kuhn, National Institutes of Health
- Aude Bernheim, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale
JGI Organizers
Simon Roux, Emiley Eloe-Fadrosh, Nikos Kyrpides, Rex Malmstrom, Tanja Woyke, Frederik Schulz
External Co-Organizers
Joanne Emerson (UC Davis), Vivek Mutalik (LBNL), Lisa Zeigler-Allen (JCVI), Eugene Koonin (NCBI), Shannon Bennett (CAS)
Overview of the Symposium
The workshop will focus on experimental innovations, computational advances, and other technological developments that will enable researchers to move from observation to predictive and prescriptive analysis. Specifically, a main objective of this workshop is to enable big data for viral ecogenomics, i.e. envisioning the methods, resources, and integrative approaches to further characterize the millions of uncultivated viruses researchers started to unveil, and address long-standing fundamental biological questions while inspiring new biotechnological and industrial applications.
Participants will notably be invited to open discussions designed to shape the future design of IMG/VR (the database of uncultivated viral genomes) to maximize its usefulness for the different actors in the field (i.e. gene-centric experimental approaches, ecosystem models, host-based evolutionary analysis, etc), as well as frame a potential viral-focused call for projects at the JGI.