19th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF MYRIAPODOLOGY

Lecturers

Keynotes

Ligia Rosario Benavides

Biologist from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia ,

She obtained her Ph.D. degree at George Washington University and has been a post-doctoral researcher at Harvard University and Washington State University. Her research has focused on the taxonomy, systematics, and biogeography of arthropods (especially arachnids and leaf litter myriapods) as well as onychophorans, both from the neotropical region and worldwide using morphological and phylogenomic data. She has published nearly 30 scientific articles in international journals, in collaboration with specialists such as Gonzalo Giribet and Gregory Edgecombe. She has been the curatorial assistant of the Arachnology Collection of the Institute of Natural Sciences at the National University of Colombia in Bogota, and a researcher at Harvard University, the American Museum of New York, and the United States Department of Agriculture.

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Keynotes

Amazonas Chagas-Jr

Graduated in Biological Sciences from the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná

He obtained his MSc and PhD degrees in Biological Sciences (Zoology) at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (2008). He served as a visiting professor at the Invertebrates Department of the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Amazonas is currently working as an associate professor in the Biology and Zoology Department of the Federal University of Mato Grosso (UFMT) and in the Zoology Graduate Program (PPGZOO) of the same university. He has experience in Zoology focusing on terrestrial and cave arthropods, working mainly in the areas of Systematics, Taxonomy, Evolution, Biogeography and Myriapod Biology. His main group of interest is Class Chilopoda, with an emphasis on neotropical species. He also has experience in onychophoran Systematics, Taxonomy, Evolution, Biogeography and Biology, and has an academic background in developing projects on bio-prospecting and arthropod checklists.

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Keynotes

Nesrine Akkari

curator of the Myriapoda collection at the Natural History Museum of Vienna.

Since 2014 Dr. Akkari Nesrine has been the curator of the Myriapoda collection at the Natural History Museum of Vienna, one of the most important in Europe and in the world. Previously, she was a postdoc at the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, after receieving her PhD from the University of Tunis in 2010. Dr. Nesrine's research focuses on integrating various approaches to study the systematics of myriapods, combining standard methods, innovative imaging techniques and molecular data. Dr. Nesrine enjoys collaborative work and regularly publishes on the taxonomy, integrative systematics, phylogeny and evolutionary history of different groups of both millipedes and centipedes. She contributed to more than 60 research papers and described more than 50 taxa new to science, including the first cyber-centipede and millipede for the group. Alongside her curatorial duties, Dr. Nesrine is a guest lecturer at the University of Vienna's Department of Evolutionary Biology where she actively supervises students. Since 2018, she has been the editor in chief of the "Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museum in Wien, serie B", as well as a subject editor for various other journals publishing on systematics. Currently, she is the vice president of the CIM council..

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Keynotes

Julián Monge-Nájera

Costa Rican ecologist, editor and photographer,

His work on the velvet worms’ prey capture mechanism was featured by The New York Times; he has also worked as adviser for National Geographic’s Cambrian Fauna Project and with David Attenborough in the BBC’s Trials of Life series. He has done research with Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, USDA, Uppsala Universitet, the University of New South Wales and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. His work on velvet worms has been published by Nature and the Zoological Journal of the Linnaean Society of London.

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Keynotes

Piyatida Pimvichai

Ph.D. degree in Biological Sciences at Chulalongkorn University.

is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Mahasarakham University, Khamriang, Kantarawichai, Maha Sarakham, Thailand. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in Biological Sciences at Chulalongkorn University. Dr. Pimvichai is currently a full time Professor at Mahasarakham university, and has research collaboration agrement with the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Belgium (Thierry Backeljau), where she did a researcher under Marie Curie postdoc fellowship. Her research has focused on the systematics, taxonomy, and phylogenetics of millipedes, mainly from Southeast Asia. Dr, Pimvichai has around 48 publications between papers, books, and revisions, and she has obtained several awards and scholarships, such as “The Best Initiative Research Award” from Shinshu University, Japan in 2010 and “Congress funding” from the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Science in 2014. Dr. Piyatida Pimvichai has previously participated in the International Congress of Myriapodology in 2008, 2011, 2014, 2017, and 2019. Currently, she is one of the members of The CIM Council.

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