Keynote Lecture: Tree Conservation, Genomics, and Change

Victoria Louise Sork is an American scientist who is a professor, the Dean of Life Sciences at University of California, Los Angeles, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In her keynote lecture that will open the five day long festival, she will discuss her research studying tree populations in California and the Eastern United States using genomics, evolutionary biology and conservation biology. Her research team seeks to better understand how natural selection and gene flow influence ecological and evolutionary dynamics of tree populations, using genetic markers to monitor gene flow and genomics to understand genetic variation. She has focused on Oaks (Quercus), particularly Quercus Iobata (Valley oaks), studying their local adaptation, the molecular ecology of their pollen, phylogeography of the genetic variation, hybridisation and how climate change will impact them.