We are announcing the organization of the international workshop on Virus Evolution and Molecular Epidemiology (VEME) in 2015, hosted by the University of the West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago on behalf of our main sponsor the International Committee for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. The workshop is co-organised by the University of Leuven (Belgium) and the J. Craig Venter Institute (USA).

We plan to organize a 'Phylogenetic Inference' module that offers the theoretical background and hands-on experience in phylogenetic analysis for those who have little or no prior expertise in sequence analysis. An 'Evolutionary Hypothesis Testing' is targeted to participants who are well familiar with alignments and phylogenetic trees, and would like to extend their expertise to likelihood and Bayesian inference in phylogenetics, coalescent and phylogeographic analyses ('phylodynamics') and molecular adaptation. A 'Large Dataset Analysis' module will cover the more complex analysis of full genomes, huge datasets of pathogens including Next Generation Sequencing data, and combined analyses of pathogen and host.

Practical sessions in these modules will involve software like, PHYLIP, PAUP*, PHYML, MEGA, PAML or HYPHY, TREE-PUZZLE, SplitsTree, BEAST, MrBayes Simplot and RDP3.

We recommend participants to buy The Phylogenetic Handbook as a guide during the workshop, and to bring their own data set.

The abstract and application deadline is March 15th

Selections will be made by the beginning of May.

The registration fee of 850 Euro covers attendance, lunches and coffee breaks.

Participation is limited to 30 scientists in each module and is dependent on a selection procedure based on the submitted abstract and statement of motivation.

A limited number of grants are available for scientists who experience difficulties to attend because of financial reasons.

Additional information and application forms are available on our website: http://www.rega.kuleuven.be/cev/veme-workshop/2015

Contact:

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.@sta.uwi.edu">This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.