Retreat Registration

The retreat registration site will close on September 20th, 2024 at 5PM.

Speakers

Lily Cheung

Georgia Tech
Website

Arjun Khakhar

Colorado State University
Website

Ronan O’Malley

University of Chicago

Talk Title:  An atlas of conserved transcription factor binding sites reveals the cell type-resolved gene regulatory landscape of flowering plants

Website 

Dr. Ronan O’Malley’s lab focuses on unraveling gene regulatory networks in plants and animals. They explore how these networks evolve, enabling organisms to adapt to new environments and stresses. Using cutting-edge techniques like single-cell genomics, high-throughput mutant screens, and DAP-seq, Dr. O’Malley’s team maps transcription factor binding sites across genomes. Their latest innovation, multiDAP, uncovers the evolutionary history of these sites. By combining multiDAP with single-nuclei RNA-seq and ATAC-seq, they aim to create comprehensive gene regulatory atlases across species, ultimately engineering climate-resilient plants. Dr. O’Malley is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago, where he also completed his BS and PhD in organic chemistry.

Keith Slotkin

Donald Danforth Plant Science Center

Talk title: The Control of Transposable Elements in Plants

Website 

Keith Slotkin holds a joint position as a Principal Investigator at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and a Professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia. His lab dissects the mechanisms that plant cells use to recognize and silence transposable elements and transgenes, and then uses this insight to more efficiently engineer plant genomes. Originally from Michigan, Keith was trained by Vicki Chandler at University of Arizona, Damon Lisch at Berkeley, and Rob Martienssen at Cold Spring Harbor. He was an Assistant and then Associate Professor at The Ohio State University before moving to his current position in St. Louis.

Miaoying Tian

University of Georgia, Department of Plant Pathology

Talk title:  Combating plant destroyers using genetic scissors

Website

Dr. Miaoying Tian is an Associate Professor serving in the position of Ji/Georgia Vegetable Industry Distinguished Professorship in Plant Pathology at University of Georgia (UGA) Tifton campus. Prior to joining UGA in Jan 2024, she held a faculty position in Department of Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences at University of Hawaii at Manoa initially as an assistant professor and later promoted to associate professor. She obtained her Ph.D. in Plant Pathology at The Ohio State University, and conducted postdoctoral research at Michigan State University and Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research.

Chris Dundas