Conference Operating Committee

	Sarah Adamowicz Assistant Professor U. Guelph		Mehrdad Hajibabaei Assistant Professor U. Guelph
	Robert Hanner Associate Professor U. Guelph		Paul Hebert Professor Canada Research Chair, Tier 1 U. Guelph

Scientific Organizing Committee

	Inger Greve Alsos Tromsø University Museum Norway		Filipe Costa University of Minho Portugal
	Torbjørn Ekrem NTNU University Museum, Norwegian University of Science and Technology Norway		Manuel Elías Gutiérrez El Colegio de la Frontera Sur Mexico
	Winnie Hallwachs Area de Conservación Guanacaste Costa Rica		Axel Hausmann Zoological State Collection Germany
	Paul Hebert University of Guelph Canada		Ian Hogg U. Waikato New Zealand
	Peter Hollingsworth Royal Botanic Garden United Kingdom		Dan Janzen Area de Conservación Guanacaste Costa Rica
	De-Zhu Li Kunming Institute of Botany, CAS China		Scott Miller National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian United States
	Marko Mutanen University of Oulu Finland		Cláudio Oliveira Biosciences Institute, Universidade Estadual Paulista Brazil
	Jan Pawlowski University of Geneva Switzerland		Rodolphe Rougerie National Museum of Natural History, Paris France
	Elisabeth Stur NTNU University Museum, Norwegian University of Science and Technology Norway		Nikolaus Szucsich Natural History Museum Vienna Austria
	Pablo Tubaro Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales Argentina		Michelle van der Bank University of Johannesburg South Africa

Local Support Committee

	Suz Bateson Digital & Print Media		Alex Borisenko International Programs
	Jeremy deWaard Bio-inventory & Collections		Meg Fritzsche Conference Coordinator
	Sujeevan Ratnasingham Barcode of Life Data Systems		Dirk Steinke Education & Outreach
	Brianne St. Jacques Administrative Support		Evgeny Zakharov Laboratory Operations

Committee Member Biographies

Conference Operating Committee

	Sarah Adamowicz Sarah (Sally) Adamowicz is an Assistant Professor at the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario and Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph. She earned her BSc at Dalhousie University, MSc from the University of Guelph, and PhD from Imperial College London and pursued postdoctoral research at the University of Waterloo. Her research group focuses on understanding the evolution and distribution of biodiversity. Key focal areas include: arctic biodiversity, ancient lakes radiations, global and continental patterns of biodiversity, molecular evolution, and the influence of major evolutionary transitions upon diversification. She leads a large collaborative initiative to use DNA barcoding to document multi-cellular life at one focal site: the sub-Arctic region of Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. This effort has yielded new insights into the species richness, post-glacial recolonization history, and complexity of interactions of life in the North.
	Mehrdad Hajibabaei Mehrdad Hajibabaei is an expert in molecular biodiversity and evolutionary biology, bioinformatics, and genomic technologies. He obtained his PhD from the University of Ottawa in 2003 focusing on building a DNA-based framework for studying evolutionary relationships among seed plants. He then pursued a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Guelph where he contributed to high-throughput analysis of DNA barcodes for species identification. As an Assistant Professor at Biodiversity Institute of Ontario and Department of Integrative Biology of the University of Guelph, he has continued his work on the application of DNA barcodes, and expanded it to include the use of genomics information in biodiversity analysis. Dr. Hajibabaei has been one of the pioneers in the use of high-throughput genomics technologies, such as microarrays and Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), for the assessment of biodiversity in samples as varied as natural health products to bulk environmental soil and water samples. By specializing on the development and application of cutting-edge technologies, he has helped lead the development of rapid and accurate analysis of biological diversity from genes to ecosystems. He has played a leadership role in establishing large-scale research projects and networks, such as the Canadian Barcode of Life Network and the International Barcode of Life (iBOL). He currently leads Biomonitoring 2.0 (www.biomonitoring2.org), a large-scale applied genomics project that employs NGS technologies, as well as sophisticated bioinformatics tools, for the comprehensive assessment of biological diversity in environmental samples from Canada’s largest national park, Wood Buffalo National Park.
	Robert Hanner Robert Hanner is an Associate Professor at the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario and Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph. He received his BSc from Eastern Michigan University and PhD from the University of Oregon. He pursued postdoctoral research at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) before joining the AMNH as a Curatorial Associate where he spearheading the development of their Ambrose Monell Cryo Collection for Molecular and Microbial Research. Robert then served as Scientific Director of the Coriell Cell Repositories at the Coriell Institute of Medical Research and also served as president of the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER). He is a member of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life’s Implementation Board, serves as coordinator for the Fish Barcode of Life (FISH-BOL) Campaign, and is the North American Node Representative to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). His Research focuses on the integration of DNA barcode data and classical taxonomic hypotheses about biodiversity, with the results being used to address both basic and applied research questions, including the role of molecular species recognition in support of food safety and food security objectives.
	Paul Hebert Paul Hebert completed his BSc at Queen’s University, his PhD at the University of Cambridge and his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Sydney. He has held faculty positions at the University of Windsor and at the University of Guelph where he is now a Canada Research Chair in Molecular Biodiversity. Over his career, Paul has served as Director of the Great Lakes Institute at Windsor, as Chair of the Department of Zoology at Guelph and as Chair of the Huntsman Marine Science Centre in St. Andrews. He is currently Director of the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario and Scientific Director of the International Barcode of Life Project. Over his career, he has led applications that have received more than $90M in research support and has published more than 400 papers, most employing molecular approaches to probe issues such as breeding system evolution, phylogeography, genome size evolution and species identification. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and has received honorary degrees from the Universities of Waterloo and Windsor.

Scientific Organizing Committee

	Inger Greve Alsos Inger Alsos has more than 20 years of experience in arctic and subarctic flora with special competence on dispersal and persistence of the more thermophilic elements in the amphi-Atlantic region applying molecular as well as ecological methods. While earlier work mainly was based on fingerprinting technics (AFLP´s, Amplified Length Polymorphisms), more recent work concentrates on use of metabarcoding to reconstruct past vegetation from lake sediments. Alsos is the vice chair of NorBol and responsible for barcoding Norwegian and Arctic vascular plants as well as microfungi.
	Filipe Costa Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences from Lisbon New University, Portugal, 2002. Assistant Professor at the University of Minho, Portugal, since 2008, leads the research group on Molecular Ecology and Biodiversity of the Centre for Molecular and Environmental Biology (CBMA). Between 2006-2007 he was a Marie Curie Fellow at Bangor University, UK. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Marine Research, Portugal, Texas Tech University, USA, and at the University of Guelph, Canada. Portugal delegate in iBOL, he is also leading the European Regional Working Group of FISH-BOL, and chaired the 2nd Conference of the European Consortium for the Barcode of Life (ECBOL2: 2-4 June 2010). Filipe Costa was granted a Marie Curie Reintegration Grant, and has been principal investigator of several national-funded projects, leading the campaign for DNA barcoding Portuguese Marine Life. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Scientific Reports and a regular referee for indexed journals. DNA barcoding interests concern marine life, with a particular focus on fish and crustaceans, among other major marine invertebrate groups like annelids and molluscs. Recent research interests concentrate on metabarcoding of marine benthic communities.
	Torbjørn Ekrem Torbjørn Ekrem is associate professor at the NTNU University Museum, Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway. He completed his MSc and in 2002 his PhD in systematic zoology at the University of Bergen. Dr. Ekrem is an insect taxonomist and systematist with particular interest in non-biting midges (Diptera: Chironomidae). His research focus over the last few years has been on the use of molecular tools and morphological data to infer species relationships and boundaries. He has been heavily involved in DNA barcoding of several organism groups since 2006 and is currently project leader and coordinator of the Norwegian Barcode of Life Network:www.norbol.org.
	Manuel Elías Gutiérrez Manuel Elías Gutiérrez, nationality Mexican. Studies: National Autonomous University of Mexico, Iztacala Faculty (1977-1980, graduated with honors), Master of Sciences with specialty in ecology, Doctor in Freshwater Ecology National Polytechnic Institute, IPN, Mexico. International Training Course on Lake Zooplankton: A tool in lake management in Ghent University (Belgium) (1992-1993). Actual position Titular Researcher, El Colegio de la Frontera Sur, Chetumal Unit, previously teaching experience (18 years) in the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) as with the last category as Professor. Teaching subjects: Invertebrate Zoology, Field Biology, Science Methodology. Supervisor of 15 students on their bachelor’s thesis, 4 master degree, 3 doctoral degree, four of them graduated with honors. Author or co-author in 73 papers, three books, three complete books, and 15 book chapters.
	Winnie Hallwachs Winnie Hallwachs is a tropical ecologist with over 30 years experience in the Area de Conservacion Guanacaste (ACG), a very diverse conserved wildland in northwestern Costa Rica. She has focused on rodent seed dispersal, videos of natural history, moth/butterfly/caterpillar inventory, and conservation. With Daniel Janzen, she guides the parataxonomist program to inventory and disseminate understanding of ACG biodiversity. DNA barcoding for identification and species discovery has been crucial technical infrastructure to understanding, and working to conserve, the ACG since 2003. She also serves when needed as Dan’s Ear.
	Axel Hausmann Born in 1960, PhD in biology in 1989 (Ludwigs-Maximilian University, Munich), married, nine children. Since 1989 curator of the collection of 10M Lepidoptera at the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology (ZSM), Munich, Germany. Since 2012 head of the Entomology Dept.. Research focus on moth systematics (Geometridae), biodiversity research, coordination of global DNA Barcoding projects, German delegate in the ISCC committee of iBOL. Axel Hausmann is first author and co-author of several major DNA Barcode data release publications with analyses of Barcode patterns and BIN species delineation. He leads the research initiative “Forum Herbulot”, he is author and editor of the two book series “The Geometrid Moths of Europe”, “The Lepidoptera of Israel” and published ca. 300 papers.
	Paul Hebert Paul Hebert completed his BSc at Queen’s University, his PhD at the University of Cambridge and his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Sydney. He has held faculty positions at the University of Windsor and at the University of Guelph where he is now a Canada Research Chair in Molecular Biodiversity. Over his career, Paul has served as Director of the Great Lakes Institute at Windsor, as Chair of the Department of Zoology at Guelph and as Chair of the Huntsman Marine Science Centre in St. Andrews. He is currently Director of the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario and Scientific Director of the International Barcode of Life Project. Over his career, he has led applications that have received more than $90M in research support and has published more than 400 papers, most employing molecular approaches to probe issues such as breeding system evolution, phylogeography, genome size evolution and species identification. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and has received honorary degrees from the Universities of Waterloo and Windsor.
	Ian Hogg Ian Hogg is Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. His research interests focus on aquatic ecology (freshwater and marine) and Antarctic/Arctic terrestrial biology. He is particularly interested in the genetic structure and conservation of natural populations, as well as their responses to global climatic changes. He has found DNA barcoding to be particularly helpful in this regard for assessing patterns of species and genetic diversity for a range of taxa. Ian obtained his Master of Applied Science from the University of Canberra in 1989 and PhD from the University of Toronto in 1995. Following a two year Fellowship at the Centre Saint-Laurent (Environment Canada) in Montreal, he took up a Lecturer position at the University of Waikato. He has spent 15 field seasons studying terrestrial life along the Transantarctic Mountains in the Ross Sea Region of Antarctica and has been supported by Antarctica New Zealand and the New Zealand Antarctic Research Institute (NZARI). He is currently Associate Director of the International Centre for Antarctic Research (ICTAR), and a steering committee member for the Antarctic Thresholds – Ecosystem Resilience and Adaptation (AnT-ERA) programme of SCAR and the Polar Barcode of Life (PolarBOL).
	Peter Hollingsworth Professor Pete Hollingsworth is Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, and a visiting professor at Edinburgh University and an honorary professor of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on understanding and conserving plant biodiversity. In recent years he has contributed to the international efforts of building a unified DNA based-index of life on earth, including Chairing the Scientific Steering Committee of the International Barcode of Life Project. He has a strong interest in linking scientific research to practical conservation outcomes, and has recently been involved in writing the new International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s guidelines on conservation translocations, and developing the Scottish Code for Conservation Translocations.
	Dan Janzen Daniel Janzen is Professor of Conservation Biology at the University of Pennsylvania, and co-architect with Winnie Hallwachs and a host of Costa Ricans of the 30-year-old and 165,000 hectare Area de Conservacion Guanacaste (ACG) in northwestern Costa Rica (www.acguanacaste.ac.cr; www.gdfcf.org). For 12 years, J&H, a team of 38 Costa Rican parataxonomists, twice as many supporting taxonomists, the BIO team, and a great diversity of Costa Rican private and government collaborators have tested the effectiveness of DNA barcoding for the identification and discovery of the ~ 30,000 ACG species of plants, herbivores, and parasitoids. As a result, ~7% (250,000) of all records on BOLD (about 13,000 species) are derived from ACG insects and plants. This effort has contributed to building public, national and global awareness of the power of DNA barcoding for connecting society to wild biodiversity, and facilitates an oncoming emergence of bioliteracy. As a member of the US National Academy of Science and recipient of the Crafoord, Kyoto, BBVA, and Blue Planet Prizes, their 495 publications and the ACG effort are overall focused on showing that a large complex tropical conserved wildland can survive through non-damaging biodiversity development based on private-public collaborations.
	De-Zhu Li De-Zhu Li received his PhD from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)’ Kunming Institute of Botany (KIB) in 1990. He worked at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh from 1993 to 1994 as a Ferguson Fellow and at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden as Taxonomist from 1994 to 1996. He is now President of CAS Kunming Branch and Professor of KIB/CAS, as well as Vice President of the Botanical Society of China, and the Representative of China for the International Barcode of Life project (iBOL). Prof. Li is a member of the editorial committee of the Flora of China project, an associate editor for BMC Evolutionary Biology, and the editor-in-chief of Plant Diversity and Resources. He was awarded to an OBE in September 2010 for his contributions to China-UK botanic exchange and the promotion of biodiversity conservation. His research interests focus on plant systematics, biogeography, and germplasm conservation. He has authored some 290 papers, including 180 in ISI-index journals, such as PNAS, Trends in Plant Science, Systematic Biology, Molecular Ecology, and New Phytologist. He has authored or contributed to nine monographs and books, including the bamboo account of the Flora of China.
	Scott Miller Scott Miller is Deputy Under Secretary for Collections and Interdisciplinary Support at the Smithsonian Institution, responsible for central planning and development of the Smithsonian’s vast collections (137 million objects). He also oversees the Office of Fellowships and Internships, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Smithsonian Institution Libraries and Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press. He continues lead the Consortium for the Barcode of Life—an international network that develops DNA-based identification tools to make biodiversity information more widely available, which he helped establish in 2003. Miller previously served the Smithsonian as Deputy Under Secretary for Science; associate director for science at the National Zoological Park from 2004 to 2006; and chairman of the departments of entomology and systematic biology at the National Museum of Natural History from 2000 to 2006. He headed the environment program at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology in Nairobi, Kenya, 1998-1999, and chaired the entomology and natural science departments at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii, 1986-1997. Miller maintains an active research program as a curator of entomology at the National Museum of Natural History. He has published more than 190 publications and co-edited four books. His current research focuses on moths of Papua New Guinea and Africa, especially the integration of systematics, ecology, biogeography and conservation of insects and plants. Miller received a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Santa Barbara and a doctorate degree in biology from Harvard University.
	Marko Mutanen Ph.D. Marko Mutanen is a curator in the Biodiversity Unit, Department of Biology, University of Oulu, Finland. His primary research field are molecular phylogenetics and molecular taxonomy, including DNA barcoding, species identification and species delimitation. He is using primarily insects, Lepidoptera in particular, as model organisms in his studies. He has been coordinating Finnish Barcode of Life project since its establishment in 2011. At the moment, his research focusses on questions of DNA barcoding and DNA taxonomy in light of genomic data.
	Cláudio Oliveira Claudio de Oliveira is PhD in Biological Sciences (Biology-Genetics) from the University of Sao Paulo in 1991. He is a professor at the Universidade Estadual Paulista Julio de Mesquita Filho since 1989 where currently holds the position of Full Professor. He is also a Associate Research of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institute. Acts as reviewer of many foundations and journals and is associate editor of the areas of Genetics and Molecular Biology of Neotropical Ichthyology journal of the Brazilian Society of Ichthyology. He has published over 250 scientific papers, 5 book chapters and one book. Works in several graduate courses in Cell and Molecular Biology and graduate programs in the fields of Genetics and Zoology. Conducts research in Genetics, Cytogenetics, Systematics, Taxonomy and fish evolution.
	Jan Pawlowski Jan Pawlowski is a Professor of Biology at the Department of Genetics and Evolution, University of Geneva. He is leading the research group on molecular evolution and ecology of microbial eukaryotes (protists). His scientific interests include evolutionary history of protists, origin of their diversification and their symbiotic interactions. His group is involved in several projects dealing with phylogenomics and metagenetic analysis of marine eukaryotes diversity, using next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies. He is particularly interested in genetic diversity of bottom-dwelling organisms in the deep-sea and polar regions, focusing on foraminifera, which constitute one of the major groups of marine meiobenthos, commonly used as bioindicators of marine pollution. His laboratory hosts the largest collection of DNA isolated from foraminifera and deep-sea sediment samples. Large part of his activities is devoted to DNA barcoding: he coordinates the Protist Working Group and is leading the Swiss Barcode of Life Network. Currently, he is working on the development of NGS-based biotic indices and their applications for biomonitoring and survey of marine environment.
	Rodolphe Rougerie Rodolphe Rougerie is Assistant Professor and Curator of Lepidoptera at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN) in Paris where he conducts research on the systematics and evolutionary history of Lepidoptera (moths & butterflies), with a special focus on the patterns of diversity and the processes of diversification in wild Silkmoths and Hawkmoths.He contributes to the assembly of DNA barcode libraries for Lepidoptera and other groups of invertebrates in Europe and in the tropics, and is also involved in DNA metabarcoding studies to develop new protocols and address ecological questions using NGS technologies.
	Elisabeth Stur Elisabeth Stur has a PhD in biology from the Ludwigs-Maximilian University, Munich and currently holds a researchers positions at the NTNU University Museum, Norway. She is an insect taxonomist working on morphology and molecular based taxonomy, species delimitation, species identification and biodiversity. Her research focus is in systematics and biogeography of Chironomidae (Diptera). She has been involved in DNA barcoding since 2006 and particularly in DNA barcoding projects on non-biting midges (Chironomidae) and other aquatic insects such as Ceratopogonidae.
	Nikolaus Szucsich Nikolaus Szucsich is coordinator of ABOL, the Austrian Barcode of Life, at the natural History Museum of Vienna, Austria. Originally a learned arthropod morphologist, Nikola worked in many projects on molecular phylogenetics and phylogenomics of arthropods. At present he is a member of the 1KITE Initiative (see www.1KITE.org). His main groups of interest are myriapods and primarily wingless insects, with a special love for neglected groups like jumping bristletails, proturans, pauropods, and symphylans.
	Pablo Tubaro Pablo L. Tubaro (born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, March 31 1963) is a Principal Researcher at the National Research Council of Argentina (CONICET), Curator of Birds and Director of the National Museum of Natural Sciences of that country (MACN). Since 2004 he has been involved in DNA barcoding and now is member of the International Scientific Cooperation Committee of the iBOL project and Chair of the Steering Committee of the All Birds Barcoding Initiative. He has taught behavioral ecology, systematics and evolution of vertebrates at the University of Buenos Aires for more than 20 years. His main research interest deals with the evolutionary biology of birds including: 1) systematics and phylogeography of Neotropical birds, 2) hybridization and speciation, and 3) comparative studies about the evolution of morphological and behavioral traits.
	Michelle van der Bank Michelle van der Bank received her PhD in Botany from the Rand Afrikaans University (Now University of Johannesburg, South Africa) in 1996. She is an Associated Professor at the University of Johannesburg and Head of the African Centre for DNA Barcoding (ACDB). The ACDB mission is to fill the knowledge gap and strengthen research frameworks for international, regional and inter-institutional co-operation in Africa in the field of DNA technology for biodiversity science. Her research group uses molecular phylogenetics, comparative analyses and intensive fieldwork to address questions relevant to biodiversity conservation in Africa.