Ecology and Evolution of Cancer

Beata Ujvari is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Integrative Ecology, Deakin University, Australia. She will take up a senior lecturer position in Bioinformatics and Genetics at the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Deakin University from January 2017. She has been the Chair of the Comparative Oncology Special Interest Group, Cancer Research Network, University of Sydney (2012- 2014), a member of the program and organizing committee for the Sydney Cancer Conference and member of the program committee for the VetSci conference (2013-2014). As an evolutionary ecologist, her research focuses on the interaction between organisms and their environment and these effects on organismal fitness, particularly with the aim to explore the significance of genetic and epigenetic organismal responses to both macro- and micro environmental challenges. Dr Ujvari has authored more than 90 refereed journal articles, book chapters and conference papers, including multidisciplinary topics such as evolution, animal behavior, and ecology as they relate to cancer. Benjamin Roche is a researcher at the at the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Research on Cancer (CREEC) and at Research Institute for Development (IRD) in the UMMISCO lab (International Research Unit for Mathematical and Computational Modeling of Complex Systems). With a background in theoretical modeling and evolutionary ecology, he has authored more than 60 scientific papers in international scientific journals focusing on evolutionary ecology of infectious diseases, ecology and evolution of cancer or public health. His cancer research is focusing on projects related to the role of ecology and evolution processes in cancerous cell proliferation, with particular interests in tumor ecology, the indirect role of infectious diseases in cancer incidence through an eco-immunological perspective and Peto's paradox (or how to identify natural resistance to cancer in wildlife animals). Frederic Thomas is Directeur de Recherches at the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Research on Cancer (CREEC), and UMR CNRS (Maladies Infectieuses et Vecteurs: Ecologie, Genetique, Evolution et Controle), both in Montpellier, France. He has authored or co-authored more than 195 refereed journal articles (with more than 5570 citations) on topics such as cancer, disease, and evolutionary biology, and animal behaviour, as well as co-edited 11 books on biodiversity, ecology, evolution, and parasitism. He is frequently invited to present at international meetings and is Associate Editor of both the Journal of Evolutionary Medicine and Evolutionary Applications.