6th Annual CanFunNet Fungal Biology Conference

Nancy Keller is the Robert L. Metzenberg and Kenneth B. Raper Professor of Mycology in the Departments of Medical Microbiology and Immunology and of Plant Pathology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her research investigates the genetic and molecular foundations of fungal pathogenesis and secondary metabolism focusing on Aspergillus and Penicillium species both for their pathogenic prowess and their metabolic richness. Her recent interests include discovery of non-canonical secondary metabolite synthases and their chemical products, the role of secondary metabolites in cross‑kingdom small‑molecule communication and the intrinsic development of antifungal resistance in Aspergillus pathogens

Website: https://sites.google.com/view/kellerlabuw/keller-lab-home 

Vasilis Kokkoris is an Assistant Professor at the Amsterdam Institute for Life and Environment at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and member of the core team for the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks. His research program focuses on better understanding the evolutionary significance of the unique arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal cell function by investigating cellular dynamics across scales, in diverse abiotic and biotic conditions, and how they affect the function and fitness of the interconnected fungi and plants. By acquiring fundamental knowledge about these important microbes, he is interested in applying what he learns towards a more sustainable agriculture and to better understand the challenges that the mycorrhizal symbiosis faces against climate change.

Website: https://www.vasilis-kokkoris.com/

Pierre-Luc Chagnon is a soil scientist at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and an Adjunct Professor at Université de Montréal. His laboratory combines experimental approaches with fundamental ecological theory to better understand interactions between plants and soil microorganisms and their impact on the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. His current research program aims to characterize how soil microbial communities respond to agricultural practices, examine the link between microbial traits and soil organic matter stabilization, and develop novel soil spectroscopy methods to monitor microbial communities, nutrient fluxes, and carbon sequestration.

Aleeza Gerstein is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Microbiology and Statistics at the University of Manitoba. Her lab applies evolutionary principles and computational statistical methods to understand the evolution of human fungal pathogens. Her group is particularly interested in determining the factors that constrain and promote genotypic and phenotypic diversity in the context of drug resistance and chronic infection, with a particular focus on recurrent vulvovaginal candidiasis.

Website: https://www.microstatslab.ca/

Dr. Xin Li is a professor at the Michael Smith Laboratories and the Department of Botany at the University of British Columbia. As a Canada Research Chair for plant immunity and Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, she focuses her research on elucidating new regulatory components of plant disease resistance in Arabidopsis thaliana. The long-term goal of her research program is to understand the molecular mechanisms of plant innate immunity. The second part of her research program focuses on investigating the biology of necrotrophic fungal pathogens including Sclerotinia sclerotiorum and Botrytis cinerea. Her goal is to understand basic developmental and virulence processes in fungi. Her research recently identified that grey and white mold fungi contain subsets of their chromosomes in more than one nucleus, challenging the text book model of fungal nuclei organisation.

Website: https://www.msl.ubc.ca/people/dr-xin-li/

Joey B. Tanney is a mycologist with the Canadian Forest Service (Natural Resources Canada) at the Pacific Forestry Centre in Victoria, BC. His research explores how fungal biodiversity, from endophytes to emerging and invasive pathogens, shapes the health and resilience of Canadian forests. He integrates fungal systematics, genomics, and ecology to tackle challenges in biosecurity, reforestation, and sustainable forest management. His recent work has focused on Douglas-fir mycobiomes as tools for mitigating foliar disease, the phytosanitary risks of live plants-for-planting, and climate-driven forest pathogens in western Canada. He is also the curator of the Pacific Forestry Centre's Forest Pathology Herbarium (DAVFP). A committed generalist, he is fascinated by all ascomycetes, with a particular soft spot for inoperculate discomycetes and dematiaceous hyphomycetes.

Websites: Joey Tanney | Natural Resources Canada

‪Joey B. Tanney - ‪Google Scholar

Michael Pyne is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Western University, where he leads a research program focused on synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, and plant natural products. His lab works to discover, overproduce, and engineer plant natural product pathways in microbial systems, combining synthetic biology with classical retrosynthesis to design novel routes to pharmaceutical scaffolds. He uses bioinformatics and combinatorial pathway reconstruction to identify plant enzymes capable of synthesizing natural product drugs and new-to-nature structures.

Website: https://www.uwo.ca/biology/people/faculty.html

Dr. Jan van Kan is Associate Professor of Plant Pathology at the Wageningen University in the Netherlands specializing in the molecular biology and genetics of plant-pathogenic fungi.  His prolific research program primarily focuses on the interaction of the necrotrophic fungal pathogens from the genus Botrytis and their hosts. His research program spans genomics, molecular mechanisms of infection, and developing strategies to combat plant diseases. It focuses on the contribution of cell-wall-degrading enzymes, toxins, and secondary metabolites of Botrytis and their contribution to cell death induction in the host plant. Other areas of his research are in infection structure development and their contribution to virulence as well as sexual reproduction. The final aspect of his research program is the identification of plant susceptibility genes and their potential for plant resistance breeding.  

Website: https://www.wur.nl/en/persons/dr-jal-jan-van-kan

Dr. Steven Hallam is a University of California Santa Cruz and MIT trained molecular biologist, microbial ecologist, entrepreneur, and innovator with over 25 years experience in field and laboratory research at disciplinary interfaces. He is a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of British Columbia, a Leopold Leadership Fellow, and program faculty member in the UBC Bioinformatics and Genome Sciences and Technology training programs. His current research intersects microbial ecology, biological engineering, and bioinformatics with specific emphasis on the creation of functional screens and computational tools that reveal hidden metabolic powers of uncultivated microbial communities in support of sustainable biotechnology innovation. He is the co-founder and scientific advisor of MycoFoundry, a Vancouver-based initiative that uses fungal mycelium to develop sustainable materials from waste and the co-founder and CEO of Koonkie Canada, a bioinformatics consulting company that designs and provides scalable algorithmic and data analytics solutions in the cloud.

https://hallam.microbiology.ubc.ca/