The MEEP Lab runs workshops on methods for evolutionary analysis. Our annual Sydney Phylogenetics Workshop is held in July each year and is free to attend. We have also run workshops at other venues, including the National Herbarium of NSW, Australian National University, University of Melbourne, University of New South Wales, and University of Gothenburg (Sweden). Some of our workshops have been offered in conjunction with COMBINE or with the annual conference of the Genetics Society of Australasia.
A list of past workshops can be found here. If you would like to receive email notifications about future workshops, please contact Simon Ho.
Sydney Phylogenetics Workshop
The MEEP Lab has run the annual Sydney Phylogenetics Workshop at the University of Sydney since 2010. This workshop provides an introduction to phylogenetic trees, evolutionary models, phylogenetic methods, maximum likelihood, Bayesian inference, molecular dating, and phylogenomics.
The 16th annual Sydney Phylogenetics Workshop was held on 26–27 June 2025 at the University of Sydney.
This free workshop was run in a partially hybrid format, with 40 in-person attendees and 70 online attendees. Priority was given to applicants who were: at early career stages (students and postdocs); from the Asia-Pacific region; and likely to derive the most benefit in the near future.
Teaching materials from the most recent workshop are available on Github. These include lecture slides and notes for the practical exercises. The Github repository also includes programmes from past workshops.
The next Sydney Phylogenetics Workshop will be held in June or July 2026. It will be a hybrid event with space for about 30–40 in-person attendees plus a larger number of online attendees.
Other past workshops and conferences
Evolutionary analysis using PAML
20 & 23 January 2023
This advanced workshop was held at the University of Sydney and included talks and practical sessions on testing for selection in codeml and Bayesian phylogenomic dating in mcmctree. These applications are part of the PAML software package. The workshop was followed by a research seminar on the latest developments in the multispecies coalescent.
The workshop was delivered by Sandra Álvarez-Carretero and Ziheng Yang (University College London). Attendees included 23 researchers and students from the University of Sydney, Australian National University, Australian Museum, and Royal Botanic Gardens. The workshop was funded by a USYD-UCL Partnership Collaboration Award.
Genomes and Biodiversity
20–22 November 2019, University of Sydney
The Genomes and Biodiversity: Research and Career Development Workshop created a space for 50 EMCRs and research leaders from a range of disciplines to meet and share their research. The event was held over three days and included opportunities to attend talks from leading academics, present their research to a broad audience, receive hands-on training in analysis of big data, and participate in a career development workshop.
The workshop was sponsored by the Australian Academy of Science through the Theo Murphy Initiative, the University of Sydney, and the University of Copenhagen. The organising committee included EMCRs from the Australian Museum (Jackie Nguyen), Australian National University (Dan Rosauer, David Duchene, and Xia Hua), and University of Sydne
Languages, Genes, and Prehistory
14 June 2019, University of Sydney
Linguistics and genetics have traditionally pursued different approaches to the reconstruction of human prehistories, applying different methods and often working at different time-scales). In recent years, however, research has emerged which attempts a direct correlation of linguistic and genetic indicators of population migrations, and a rapidly growing field of inquiry applies methods developed in the context of computational phylogenetics and cladistics to various types of language data to derive probabilistic models of language evolution and, therefore, language relationships.
This day-long interdisciplinary workshop brought together world-leading scholars to focus on intersections between theory and method in evolutionary biology and linguistics, with a special focus on the Asia-Pacific region. The workshop included talks by researchers from the University of Sydney (Mark Post, Paul Sidwell), Australian National University (Lindell Bromham, Xia Hua), and Universität Bern (George van Driem), as well as a software clinic run by Simon Ho.
Taming the BEAST Down Under
17–22 February 2019, University of Sydney
In February 2019 we hosted the week-long workshop Taming the BEAST Down Under, which focussed on Bayesian phylogenetic analysis using BEAST2. The workshop consisted of invited talks, lectures, and hands-on tutorial sessions given by core BEAST2 developers and experts in phylogenetics. The aim of the workshop was to provide participants with a firm grasp of the theory behind the methods central to phylogenetics, as implemented in BEAST2. The workshop covered Bayesian phylogenetics, phylogenetic model selection, molecular clocks, total-evidence dating, species trees and gene trees, and pathogen phylodynamics.
The teaching team included leading international and Australian reseachers from the University of Auckland, ETH Zurich, University of Sydney, Flinders University, University of Melbourne, and Australian National University. The workshop was organised by Simon Ho and several members of the MEEP Lab.