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London Calling 2024 - Speakers

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Check out the line up of speaking at London Calling 2024.

Oxford Nanopore Technologies

Mrinalini Watsa

Mrinalini Watsa
Job title
Institution
San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, USA
Biography

Mrinalini Watsa is a research scientist with the Conservation Science Team at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. Her primary focus is applying low-cost field genomics tools, like nanopore sequencing, in tropical field labs to enhance biodiversity and disease surveillance. She is also developing affordable conservation tech, such as animal-mounted collars and microchip-based sensors, for wildlife monitoring. She earned her bachelor’s degree in biology from Grinnell College in Iowa and her doctorate in biological anthropology from Washington University in Saint Louis.

Recent publications

Watsa, M. and Wildlife Disease Surveillance Focus Group. Rigorous wildlife disease surveillance. Science. 369(6500):145–147 (2020). DOI: 10.1126/science.abc0017

Watsa, M., Erkenswick, G.A., Pomerantz, A., and Prost, S. Portable sequencing as a teaching tool in conservation and biodiversity research. PLoS Biol. 18(4):p.e3000667 (2020). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000667

Arana, A., et al. Lack of local genetic representation in one of the regions with the highest bird species richness, the Peruvian Amazonia. Plos one. 19(1): p.e0296305 (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0296305

Talks at this conference