Colloquium
In the Fall and Spring semesters, we host a weekly colloquium (seminar with Q&A by an invited speaker). Colloquia are Wednesdays, starting at 11.10am in Room D139 in the Science Building. Weekly colloquium announcements are distributed to the BioAll listserv; to be added to this email list, please email Dr. David Lahti. Please direct any other related queries to Prof. Cathy Savage-Dunn, who runs the series.
Departmental colloquia in the past five years
Older colloquium flyers are available upon request; please email Dr Joanna Coleman, our Webmaster
2025 COLLOQUIA
| Name | Affiliation | Talk title |
| Jennifer Alexander | University of Pennsylvania | Balancing cellular repair and regeneration in aging and disease |
| Shana M Caro | Adelphi University | How birds think: Real-world complexity and consequences shape decision making in wild birds |
| Kerin Claeson | Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine | From sabers to spikes: Giant extinct salmon and the weapons they wield |
| Cagney Coomer | University of Michigan | Decoding neural connections: advances in transsynaptic tracing using zebrafish |
| Daniel Friedman | Active Inference Institute | Inference about foraging & foraging as inference |
| Kirsty Graham | Hunter College | Every body communicates: Ape gestures, display, and posture |
| Mark Hauber | CUNY Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) | The neural basis of species recognition in brood parasitic birds and their hosts |
| Ye He | CUNY ASRC | MALDI mass spectrometry imaging: spatial metabolomics for neuroscience research and beyond |
| Claudia Igler | University of Manchester | Exploring the biophysical constraints of gene regulatory design |
| Hollie Marshall | University of Leicester | DNA methylation as a driver for genomic adaptation across evolutionary timescales |
| Monica Mowery | York College | Shifts in species interactions during invasive range expansion |
| Stephen Redenti | Lehman College | Exosomes released during retinal development and disease |
2024 COLLOQUIA
| Name | Affiliation | Talk title |
| Sebastian Alvarado | Queens College | Behavioral and morphological plasticity in an African cichlid, Astatotilapia burtoni |
| Merry Camhi | Wildlife Conservation Society | Swimming with sharks: realities & misperceptions |
| Pablo Castillo | Albert Einstein College of Medicine | Presynaptic protein synthesis & synaptic plasticity |
| Yu-Chieh David Chen | New York University (NYU) | Wiring up the brain during development: Coordination and propagation of cell fate choice in neural circuit assembly |
| Peter Compo | DuPont Ventures | Recognizing natural selection as a dynamical law: key to understanding creativity and evolution in culture |
| Vanessa Ezenwa | Yale University | Helminth-microbe coinfection: insights from a natural system |
| Ian Fish | Plum Island Animal Disease Center | FMDV superinfection promotes hybrid progeny viruses |
| Herminia Gomez | US Department of Agriculture | Federal employment opportunities for bio majors |
| Anke Kloock | NYU Grossman School of Medicine | Rictor regulates the growth of germline stem cells non-autonomously |
| Robert Kozol | St. John’s University | Investigating novel behaviors in the blind Mexican cavefish: How evolution shapes neural circuits in a dark and nutrient-poor environment |
| Melina Giakoumis | American Museum of Natural History | Population genomics ecology & conservation of Asterias sea stars in the North Atlantic |
| Stephen Gosnell | Baruch College | Environmental & cultural impacts of oyster restoration in New York & next steps |
| Austin Gray | Virginia Tech | Origin, fate, and impact of microplastics in freshwater ecosystems |
| Rabindra Mandal | Hunter College | Exploring gut bacteroides in severe malaria anemia: challenges and way forward |
| Dan McCloskey | College of Staten Island | The calming effect of social behavior in African mole-rats |
| Néva Meyer | Clark University | Worms do it differently: Dual autonomous and conditional neural specification in annelids |
| Monte Neate-Clegg | University of California Los Angeles | Explaining variation in responses of birds to global change |
| Elena Paredo | Rochester Institute of Technology | Habitat transitions as drivers of evolution in plants |
| John Patton | Indiana University Bloomington | Replication of the Rotavirus genome: secrets revealed by reverse genetics |
| Christopher Rongo | Rutgers University | Using C. elegans to understand the role of mitochondria in aging |
| Jennifer Salerno, | George Mason University | |
| Mark Stoeckle | Rockefeller University | Mid-Atlantic fishing with environmental DNA (eDNA): successes and challenges |
| Mariana Torrente | Brooklyn College | New targets in neurodegenerative disease: focus on histone post-translational modifications |
| Monica Trujillo | Queensborough Community College | Elucidating the biology of bacterial lifestyles using continuous cultures |
| Lei Xie | Hunter College | Omics, AI, and systems medicine |
2023 COLLOQUIA
| Name | Affiliation | Title |
| Nihal Altan-Bonnet | National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute | What viruses do to infect you! |
| Betty Diamond | Northwell Health | A panel discussion of pathways to biomedical research |
| Eleonora Gianti | Queens College | Biomedical discovery enabled by molecular simulation and computer-aided drug design |
| Ruben Gonzalez | Columbia University | From fluctuations to function: The role of dynamics in the mechanism and regulation of translation |
| Marcelo Magnasco | Rockefeller University | Animal cognition: dolphins and octopuses |
| Arnaud Martin | George Washington University | Genetic evolution caught on the wing of butterflies |
| Xue Mei | St. John’s University | The molecular basis of sperm-egg interactions in C. elegans |
| Jeff Podos | University of Massachusetts, Amherst | Ecological speciation in Galapagos finches |
| Juergen Polle | Brooklyn College | Exploring microalgal metabolism: from primary to secondary metabolism |
| Douglas Portman | University of Rochester | Food vs. Sex: Dynamic modulation of neural circuits and behavior in C. elegans |
| Mansi Srivastava | Harvard University | The mechanisms and evolution of regeneration |
| Jessica Ware | American Museum of Natural History | Insect molecular and morphological evolution: insights on dragonflies |
| Christine Wilkinson | University of California, Berkeley | Harnessing interdisciplinarity for human-carnivore coexistence |
2022 COLLOQUIA
| Name | Affiliation | Talk title |
| Irina Arkhipova | University of Chicago, Marine Biological Laboratory | Bacterial N4-methylcytosine as an epigenetic mark in eukaryotic DNA |
| James Carlton | Williams College | The Age of Invasions meets Age of Plastics: How tsunamis, mega[1]rafting, coastal development & climate change may be related |
| Lauren Chapman | McGill University | Hypoxia in a warming world: fish response to environmental stressors in African inland waters |
| Elizabeth Clare | York University | Environmental DNA in the air – cutting edge tools for biodiversity science |
| Joanna Coleman | Queens College | Bat conservation – where are we and where do we go from here? |
| Peter Djikstra | Central Michigan University | Filial cannibalism and managing the oxidative cost of reproduction in a mouthbrooding cichlid fish |
| Alexander Dityatev | German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases | Extracellular matrix and neuroplasticity |
| Deborah Gordon | Stanford University | The ecology of collective behavior |
| Chris Harvey-Clark | Dalhousie University | North Atlantic trifecta: Greenland shark, torpedo ray & great white shark- new insights into the changing abundance of three large elasmobranch species |
| Ankur Jain | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | RNA aggregation in neurodegenerative disease |
| Darcy Kelley | Columbia University | Underwater songs |
| Svetlana Komarova | McGill University | Purinergic signaling in bone mechanobiology |
| Peri Kurshnan | Albert Einstein College of Medicine | Revisiting the role of cell-adhesion molecules in presynaptic assembly |
| Eugene Lien | NYC Office of Chief Medical Examiner | Forensic DNA analysis |
| Douglas Nixon | Weill Cornell | How do exogenous and endogenous viruses interact? |
| Diana Padilla | Stony Brook University | Lessons learned from the ongoing invasion of the zebra mussel, Dreissena polymorpha |
| Weigang Qiu | Hunter College | Jenner’s Dilemma and how to win evolutionary arms races against microbial pathogens |
| Christian Rocheleau | McGill University | C9orf72/SMCR-8 negatively regulates C. elegans EGFR signaling via the Arf6 GTPase |
| Dustin Rubenstein | Columbia University | Causes and consequences of sociality |
| Monica Trujillo | Queensborough Community College | SARS-CoV-2 surveillance & evolutionary history through the lens of NYC wastewater |
| Paul Forlano | Brooklyn College | Dopamine modulates sensitivity of the inner ear for reproductive communication in a vocal fish |
| Andrew Reinman | CUNY Advanced Sciences Research Center & Hunter College | Interactive effects of forest fragmentation & climate change on forest carbon sequestration |
| Phillip Staniczenko | Brooklyn College | Predictive community ecology: Putting networks to work |
| Michael Stokesbury | Acadia University | Movement, migration, & habitat partitioning of western & eastern origin Atlantic bluefin tuna tagged off Port Hood, Nova Scotia |
| Yaowu Yao | University of Connecticut | Development & evolution of self-organizing pigmentation patterns in monkeyflowers |
| Soojin Yi | University of California, Santa Barbara | Evolution of human brain: Cells, DNA methylation & gene expression |
2021 COLLOQUIA
| Name | Affiliation | Talk title |
| Clarice Aiello | University of California (UC) Los Angeles | From nanotech to living sensors: Unraveling the spin physics of biosensing at the nanoscale |
| Erol Akçay | University of Pennsylvania | |
| Daniel Bernard | McGill University | |
| Stephane Boissinot | New York University (NYU), Abu Dhabi | Ten years of research in Ethiopia: Adaptations to high elevation in frogs & other stories |
| Molly Cummings | University of Texas Austin | Testing how social complexity and conflict lead to developmental differences in behavioral syndromes and social cognition in swordtail fishes |
| Pilar Domingo-Calap | University of Valencia | Epidemiological surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater |
| Collin Ewald | ETH Zurich | Mechanotransduction coordinates inter-tissue extracellular matrix protein homeostasis promoting longevity in C. elegans |
| Jessica Feldman | Stanford University | |
| Stanley Gehrt | Ohio State University | Extreme urban ecology of an apex predator: Coyotes in Chicago |
| Terry Hebert | McGill University | Tracking GPCR signaling- from the single cell to the living brain? |
| David Held | Auburn University | Ecological considerations for the management of crape myrtle bark scale |
| Lydia Joubert | Stanford University | |
| Marcella Kelly | Virginia Tech University | An ecologist’s path toward studying carnivore co-existence across ecosystems |
| Jason Knouft | St. Louis University | Climate change, hydrology, & freshwater fishes |
| Lesley MacNeill | McMaster University | Cuticle collagen expression is regulated in response to environmental stimuli by the GATA transcription factor ELT-3 in Caenorhabditis elegans |
| George Pess | National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration | Ecosystem response to the removal of the elwha river dams |
| Dominique Pritched | Howard University | Circuit mechanisms for associative learning in the cerebellum |
| Stacy Rosenbaum | University of Michigan | The relationships among early life experiences, social bonds, & adult health in wild savannah baboons |
| Joshua Rosenthal | University of Chicago, Marine Biological Laboratory | Rewriting the cephalopod neural transcriptome by editing mRNAs |
| Juan Santos | St. John’s University | Evolution, ecophysiology and bioinformatics: Complex phenotypes, transcriptomics & biodiversity of amphibians and lizards in a changing world |
| Philippe Séguéla | McGill University | Functional interrogation of genetically-defined sensory neurons in pain and itch pathways |
| Kenneth B Storey | Carleton University | Living dead: Metabolic arrest and the control of biological time |
| David Wagner | David Wagner | Insect decline in the Anthropocene |
| Isaac Wirgin | NYU Langone Medical Center | Evolutionary responses of urban fishes to toxicant exposure |
| Deborah Yelon | University of California, San Diego | Molecular mechanisms regulating cardiac architecture in zebrafish |
| Mason Youngblood | Max Planck Institute | |
| Ji Zhang | McGill University | Inflammation and chronic pain |