Programme

Professor Patricia Wiltshire was a lecturer and researcher, for a total of 34 years, at the University of London, firstly at King’s College, and later at University College. She is an ecologist, with special interests in palynology and microbiology. While at UCL, she was engaged in palaeoenvironmental reconstruction in archaeology, and realised that it was a short step from reconstructing ancient environmental scenarios to modern forensic ones. Over the last 25 years, she has concentrated on developing and establishing the disciplines of forensic ecology, botany, and palynology. In the last 10 years, she has established forensic mycology with her mycologist husband. Mycology has proved to provide robust probative evidence on many occasions. 

Patricia has particular skills in locating clandestine graves, establishing the provenance of unknown materials, and post mortem interval, as well as linking objects, people, and places through botanical and mycological trace evidence. She has worked on approaching 300 criminal cases, both for the prosecution and defence of suspects, and many of these have been very high profile in the UK. She is an experienced expert witness. She has worked with every police force in the UK and Ireland, and lectures worldwide on the disciplines she has developed. 

Patricia is on the editorial board of Forensic Science International, and is Editor-in-Chief for a special edition of the journal on Forensic Ecology. She has a large publication record, and continues to research, teach, and publish her work.  In 2016, she received a Simons Fellowship at Cambridge University, at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematics. 

Duur Aanen is an associate professor in Evolutionary Genetics at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. After finishing his PhD on speciation of fungi at Wageningen university in 1999, he became a postdoc and later assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen and returned to Wageningen in 2006. Duur Aanen specializes on the origin and evolution of cooperation and uses fungi and the symbiosis between termites and Termitomyces fungi as his main model systems.

Dominik Begerow is a dean of Faculty of Biology and Biotechnology Ruhr-University Bochum. His main interest is evolution and biodiversity of plants and interactions in complex ecosystems.  He uses the integrative approach to the phylogenetics of basidiomycetes and smut fungi. Currently he analyses different plant-fungus interactions and combines phylogenetic methods with infection studies to support the hypotheses of cospeciation and host jumps.

 

Lynne Boddy is a fungal ecologist, who has investigated the ecology of wood decomposition, and wood decay fungi, for over 40 years. Her favourite areas of research are into the ways in which fungi fight each other, interact with bacteria and invertebrates, and form communities in decaying wood. Other favourites are the ways in which fungi search the forest floor for food resources and respond to their finds, and how global change is affecting fungi. Lynne is Professor of Mycology, and teaches and researches into fungal ecology at Cardiff University UK. She is a prolific author having co-authored or edited seven books, written well over 250 scientific papers, and is chief editor of the journal Fungal Ecology. She is also an ardent communicator of the mysteries and importance of the amazing hidden Kingdom of Fungi to the general public on TV, radio, popular talks, articles and exhibitions. Lynne was president of the British Mycological Society (2009–2010). She has received many awards including the Berkeley Award (1989), the Fleming Award (1991), European Mycological Association outstanding achievement award (2015), the Marsh Award (2016) and the Frances Hoggan Medal (2018). She is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and of the Royal Society of Biology.

 

 

 

 

Geoffrey Gadd is a geomicrobiologist and mycologist with over 30 years direct research experience of metal-mineral-microbe interactions in the contexts of environmental significance for metal mobility, and applications in metal biorecovery and recycling, bioremediation, mineral formation and/or dissolution. He holds the Boyd Baxter Chair of Biology and leads the Geomicrobiology Group in the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, and is a former Deputy Research Director, Head of the Division of Environmental and Applied Biology, and founding Head of the Division of Molecular Microbiology in the College of Life Sciences. He has published over 250 refereed papers, and many co-edited books, invited chapters and reviews, and contributed to 5 patents. He has delivered >120 invited lectures in >20 countries. He has made particularly notable contributions relating to fungal metal-mineral transformations, and the establishment of “geomycology” as a recognised research area. He is a former President of the British Mycological Society (BMS) (2004-7), and has served on several Society for General Microbiology (SGM) (now Microbiology Society) committees including being the former chair of the SGM Environmental Microbiology Group, and the first Chair of the SGM Eukaryotic Microbiology Group. He has received several research awards, including the 2004 Charles Thom Award, Society for Industrial Microbiology (USA) , 2009 Colworth Prize of the SGM, the 2012 Sir James Black Medal of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the Berkeley Award (1990) and the President’s Medal (2012) of the BMS. He was a visiting professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xinjiang Institute of Ecology and Geography, Urumqi, China under the 1000-Talents programme (2014-6), and is elected Fellow of the Society for Biology, the Linnean Society, American Academy of Microbiology, International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the Learned Society of Wales and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and Member of the European Academy of Microbiology (EAM).

 

 

 

 

David Hawksworth  is a mycologist, applying knowledge of fungi (especially microfungi and lichens) to various aspects of applied and environmental sciences, including conservation, ecology, forensic science, medical mycology, palaeoecology, plant pathology, and pollution monitoring. For many years he was the Director of International Mycological Institute, He was visiting Professor for Geography and the Environment at the University of Southampton.He obtained many medals and awards – among others Bicentenary Medal, Linnean Society 1978; Acharius Medal, International Association for Lichenology 2002; Josef Adolf von Arx Award, Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, 2011; Ainsworth Medal, International Mycological Association 2014;. He is exelent taxonomist and recognized world authority on the diversity, systematics, and ecology of fungi, especially microfungi and lichens. He is particularly known for studies and surveys of fungal diversity, and the bioindication of air pollution. Other interests include the biodiversity and conservation and naming systems of all groups of organisms. Since 2007 he develops research in the field of forensic science. He was President of many scientific societies – among others of International Mycological Association and British Mycological Society.

 

 

 

 

Bogdan Jaroszewicz is a botanist. His research activities focus on plant-animal and recently plant-fungal interactions, especially in forest ecosystems. That covers inter alia: influence of large herbivores on vegetation, frugivory, zoochoric seed dispersal, pollination, ecology of soil seed banks, processes of trees decay etc. He is involved in problem how climate change influences range limits and distribution of species and how plant-animal interactions interplay in the process of plant migrations and resulting shifts in their range limits. For many years he was vice-director of Białowieża National Park. Currently he is head of Białowieża Geobotanical Station, University of Warsaw.

 

 

 

 

Annegret Kohler is a researcher in the tree-microbe interactions department at INRA Grand-Est Nancy in France. Her research is focused on the biology of trees and the associated forest fungi and their role in forest ecosystems. She is particularly interested in mycorrhizal symbiosis and in characterizing the molecular mechanisms established during development and functioning of this mutualistic interaction, as well as to understand the evolution of symbiotic fungi from saprotrophic ancestors. During the last 10 years she was involved in many genomic projects and in particular in charge of the transcriptomic analyses within these projects. She published over 50 scientific papers related to transcriptomics, genomics and tree-microbe interactions.

 

 

 

 

Marc-André SELOSSE is professor at Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (Paris) and University of Gdansk (Department of Plant Taxonomy and Nature Conservation, Poland). His two teams’ researches focus on the ecology and evolution of mycorrhizas. His works track: First, the genetic structure of the populations of mycorrhizal fungi (mainly in the genera Laccaria, Lactarius and Tuber) to understand gene flow at various scales (including allopatric speciation), local adaptation and mating systems; Second, the assembly of communities of mycorrhizal fungi, from the local scale (eg. after disturbances or in the modern environmental changes) to larger or even global scales, where he analyze interactions networks linking plants and fungi; Third, mycorrhizal networks, i.e. the between-plants links created by fungi simultaneously colonizing two plants of same or different species. These links allow carbon flow between plants in some instance, and some plants use mycorrhizal network to get carbon from their fungi. They include achlorophyllous plants fully relying on this for their nutrition, but also some green forest plants also partially rely on this carbon source (mixotrophic plants). His models and empirical research cover temperate and tropical ecosystems. He also has a general interest for symbiosis and publishes opinion and review papers on the evolution of symbioses.