Joint AGI-SIGA seminar series 2021

Viviane Cordovez, Ph.D. is a scientist at the Dept of Microbial Ecology, Netherlands Institute of Ecology (NIOO) in Wageningen. She is interested in exploring the diversity and functions of plant-associated microorganisms and the mechanisms underlying plant-microbe interactions. Currently, together with Danish and American academic partners, she investigates the microorganisms inhabiting the phyllosphere microbiome of wheat for protection against pathogens. She is also involved in collaborative projects between NIOO and USFQ (Ecuador), where they investigate the impact of plant domestication on the microbiomes of wild and modern tomato plants grown in native and agricultural soils.

Nicola Segata, Ph.D., is Professor at the CIBIO Department at the University of Trento (Italy). His lab (http://segatalab.cibio.unitn.it/) comprises more than 20 researchers and employs experimental metagenomic tools and novel computational approaches to study the diversity of the microbiome across conditions and populations and its role in human diseases. The projects in the lab bring together computer scientists, microbiologists, statisticians, and clinicians and are generally focused on profiling microbiomes with strain- level resolution and on the meta-analysis of very large sets of metagenomes with novel computational tools. His work is supported by the European Research Council and by other European agencies.