David L. Erickson, PhD delivers a seminar on Feb. 14 at the Centre for Biodiversity Gemonics (CBG) at U of G. Erickson is an associate research scientist at the University of Maryland in the Joint Institute for Food Science and Applied Nutrition, as well as founder of the biotechnology company DNA4 Technologies LLC.

Erickson has published extensively in the fields of ecology, evolution and genetics. His current research focuses on metagenomics and its application to questions in health and food safety. Metagenomic reconstruction of complex biological environments is increasingly being adopted for use in food safety, biodiversity screening and even clinical diagnostics. In this presentation, the fundamentals of metagenomic based bioinformatics are described, and its application and validation in a number of fields is reviewed.

Erickson’s talk is part of the CBG Science Seminar Series, a series intended to provide a forum for CBG researchers, visiting scientists and collaborators across the University to present their work and to share new findings and ideas with their colleagues.

The seminars are held in the CBG Visualization Theatre (Room 1009) every second Friday, 11:30 a.m. to  12:30 p.m.

If you are a faculty member, postdoctoral fellow or visiting researcher and are interested in sharing your research in a 30 to 45 minute presentation at the Biodiversity Seminar Series please contact:

• Mehrdad Hajibabaei mhajibab@uoguelph.ca
• Maria (Masha) Kuzmina kuzminam@uoguelph.ca, or
• Suresh Naik snaik@uoguelph.ca

We accept submissions for talks on an ongoing basis.

More information is on the CBG website.