Seminar by Dr Sebastian Rauschert
We're delighted to advertise that Dr Sebastian Rauschert of the Minderoo Foundation will be giving a talk on the 2nd August at 11am, on the Foundation’s OceanOmics project. Which is a simply incredible initiative aimed at better understanding the diversity in the oceans.
The talk will be in the auditorium CSS 22.0.19 in building 22 at the Kommunehospital (next to the DNA labs).
Title: Minderoo OceanOmics – Revolutionising the way we measure, understand and conserve life in the ocean.
Abstract
The world’s ocean is the largest, least understood and yet one of the most exploited realms on our planet. Although the ocean covers around 71% of Earth’s surface and supports 90% of its biosphere, more than 80% of the ocean is unmapped, unexplored and unobserved. The Minderoo OceanOmics program is a game-changing approach to measuring, understanding, and conserving marine life using environmental DNA (eDNA). The program comprises four key pillars, including computational biology & AI, Molecular Innovation, Ocean Genomes, and Marine Engineering & Automation. Through advanced computational tools and algorithms, the Computational Biology & AI pillar of OceanOmics will enable analysis of vast amounts of eDNA data and generate new insights into marine biodiversity and ecosystem dynamics. The molecular innovation pillar focuses on developing cutting-edge technologies for eDNA extraction and analysis, which will provide unprecedented accuracy and efficiency in identifying and studying marine species through e.g. eCells. The Ocean Genomes pillar produces reference genomes for marine vertebrates, which are essential for the identification of individual fish for population genomics. Finally, the marine engineering and automation pillar focuses on the development of advanced sampling and sensing technologies that can collect eDNA from the ocean and autonomous systems that can process and analyse eDNA data in real-time. This presentation will introduce the program and focus on the computational approaches we are developing to work towards the mountaintop of conserving 30% of the world’s ocean by 2023.
Brief Bio
Dr Sebastian Rauschert is a computational biologist and data scientist, with nearly a decade of extensive experience and expertise in analysing data across the omics spectrum, spanning metabolomic, epigenetic and genomic data. His key expertise is in processing and analysing omics data sets and developing predictive models and software to extract meaningful insights from large and complex data sets. He currently leads the computational biology & AI pillar of the OceanOmics program at the Minderoo Foundation, to advance environmental DNA technology to better measure, understand and conserve life in the world’s ocean.