Workshop: Taming the BEAST Down Under

Members of the MEEP Lab recently hosted the “Taming the BEAST Down Under” international workshop at the University of Sydney. This workshop provided training in Bayesian phylogenetic methods and evolutionary analysis, focusing on the software BEAST2. The workshop ran from 17 to 22 February and involved 41 attendees and 16 instructors. The teaching team included researchers from the University of Sydney, ETH Zurich, University of Auckland, Flinders University, University of Melbourne, and Australian National University.

Attendees were welcomed at an opening mixer held at the Courtyard Cafe (University of Sydney). The main teaching component of the workshop took place in the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney, with a half-day session of talks at the Calyx, Royal Botanic Garden. During the workshop, attendees also enjoyed dinner at a Thai restaurant in Newtown and a dinner cruise on Sydney Harbour.

The workshop programme contains links to all of the teaching materials and can be viewed here.

The next workshop from the MEEP Lab will be the Sydney Phylogenetics Workshop, scheduled for July 2019. The workshop will cover introductory phylogenetics, with a focus on maximum-likelihood and Bayesian methods.