The lecture by Martin Polz, MIT will take place at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna.
If you are interested in participating, please email to office@csh.ac.at.
Location: Salon
Abstract:
Microbes are the dominant form of life on the planet but we know very little about what biological principles structure microbial life. For animal and plant communities, important biological units are species and communities, yet for microbes these are difficult to define due to inherent instability. I will present some recent results demonstrating how network analysis provides insights into how to organize microbes into biologically meaningful units akin to plant and animals.
Bio:
Martin Polz is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Parsons Laboratory for Environmental Science and Engineering. His research interests are focused on the evolution and ecology of microbes with major focus on genomics and population-level processes. He obtained his M.S. degree in Zoology from the University of Vienna and his Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University. Polz joined the faculty at MIT in 1998 where he teaches microbial ecology and evolution at both the undergraduate and graduate level. He is former chair of the Joint Program in Biological Oceanography and co-chair of the MIT Microbiology program.
Polz is a Fellow of the American Academy for Microbiology and recipient of the Eli Lilly and the Company Elanco Research Award, the oldest prize awarded by the American Society for Microbiology. At MIT, he has received the Frank E. Perkins Award for excellence in graduate advising. Polz has also served as editor for Environmental Microbiology and Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews and is on the editorial board of Microbiome.