SEB Annual Conference Florence 2026

Prof Lewis Halsey

University of Roehampton

Prof. Lewis Halsey studies the energetics of animals, in particular seabirds and humans. He leads the Roehampton University Behaviour and Energetics Lab (RUBEL).

 

Prof Shaun Killen

Professor of Ecophysiology, University of Glasgow

Who leads and who follows? The interplay between metabolic phenotype and social behaviour in fish
Social behaviours come with a variety of costs and benefits for individual animals. For this reason, individuals tend to vary in their degree of sociability. Recent evidence suggests that this behavioural variation is linked to various traits associated with bioenergetics, including metabolic rates and locomotor ability. On the one hand, underlying variation in metabolic traits (e.g. maintenance metabolism, maximum metabolism) seems to affect sociability by affecting predator avoidance, foraging needs, and competitive ability.

Specifically, an animal’s energetic status influences not only whether an individual will join a group of conspecifics, but also the behaviour of individuals that have already joined groups. Conversely, an animal’s social environment can feedback to affect its physiological traits and performance. This can occur via the effects of aggression and competition but also through stress reduction and the energy-saving benefits of moving in groups. Here I review this interplay between social behaviour and individual physiology, including the modulating role of additional factors such as temperature and oxygen availability. I also discuss ways in which these links may be relevant in the context of human predation on fish populations and fisheries-induced evolution.

: http://www.shaunkillen.com

Dr Andrea Perna

IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca

Andrea Perna is an assistant professor at the IMT School for Advanced Studies in Lucca, Italy. Previously, he was Senior Lecturer at the University of Roehampton in London, UK. His research focuses on the study of collective animal behaviour, examining how individuals interact to create patterns in bird flocks, fish schools, and social insect colonies. Recently, he has expanded his focus to incorporate eco-physiological approaches, trying to make a bridge between the physiology of individual organisms and community-level ecological patterns.

Dr Harriet Goodrich

Lecturer and Research Fellow, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies

Harriet is a comparative and environmental physiologist at the University of Tasmania who studies the physiological mechanisms that shape fish performance and resilience. Her research examines how environmental change and human–wildlife interactions, including fishing and ocean warming, affect fish phenotypes, with consequences for vulnerability and persistence in fish populations. Much of her work focuses on the gut phenotype, exploring how digestive physiology, acid–base balance, and ionoregulation regulate energy acquisition, growth, and stress tolerance in both wild and aquaculture systems, particularly under warming and hypoxic conditions.

Dr Barrett Wolfe

Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania

 Barrett is a fisheries scientist with expertise in fish ecophysiology, movement ecology, and climate resilience. His research ranges from snapper and flathead in coastal reefs to pelagic predators such as tuna and swordfish, using acoustic tagging, physiological trials and telemetry to reveal how species respond to warming oceans. Barrett serves as the national coordinator of Redmap, Australia’s citizen science platform for mapping out‑of‑range marine species sightings, helping convert thousands of public observations into scientific evidence of poleward species shifts and ecological change. His latest work, a decade-long continental assessment, identified dozens of climate-driven range extensions along Australia’s coastline by combining citizen science data with ecological modelling. 

Dr  Dominic Cram

University of East Anglia

Dom is a behavioural ecologist whose research focusses on the role of cooperation and conflict in shaping health and fitness in wild vertebrates. His study systems are primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, including weaverbirds and meerkats in the Kalahari Desert, and honeyguides in East Africa. Dom is a Lecturer in Ecology and Conservation at the University of East Anglia, UK.  He simply will not shut up about wildlife, except when trying to photograph it.

Dr Jules Devaux

University of Auckland

Jules is a Research Fellow at the Applied Surgery and Metabolism Lab (ASML) within the School of Biological Sciences. His research investigates mitochondrial function and dysfunction across various animal models and stressors. He examines the extreme of metabolism in bumblebee flight muscle, the impact of temperature on mitochondrial function in fish hearts, exploring multiple biological levels. His research also extends to mitochondrial plasticity in anoxia-tolerant sharks and intertidal fish. With a translational aspect, he has been involved in motor neuron disease, cancer, and space research. More recently, he has been addressing mitochondrial physiology in human liver and heart transplantation in the context of ischemia-reperfusion injuries.

Dr Alice Harford

Research Fellow, University of Queensland

Alice is a Research Fellow at The Critical Care Research Facility (CCRG) and Institute of Molecular Bioscience (IMB) within The University of Queensland. Her research investigates mitochondrial function and stress physiology across various animal models in preclinical, aquaculture, and conservation fields. Alice’s current project assesses the feasibility and therapeutic potential of mitochondrial transplantation to improve organ function in donated hearts (both donation after circulatory death and brain stem death) for heart transplant.

Mariacristina Filice

Mariacristina Filice is a physiologist at the Department of Biology, Ecology, and Earth Sciences of the University of Calabria. Her work focuses on investigating physiological and molecular mechanisms that enable aquatic organisms to survive environmental challenges, with particular emphasis on oxygen fluctuations. By studying hypoxia-tolerant species (i.e. the goldfish), she investigates how the cardiovascular system adapts to sustain animal homeostasis under low oxygen. Her studies highlight the central role of mitochondria in the adaptability of the fish heart to hypoxia and propose cardiac mitochondria remodelling as a key mechanism to sustain the enhanced hemodynamic performance of the goldfish heart under low oxygen.

Her research has also contributed to characterize the role of the nitrergic system in regulating fish heart contractility and cellular protection under chemical and physical stress, integrating cross-species approaches to identify conserved biological pathways. Her work further extends into ecophysiology, examining how chemical pollutants impact aquatic animal health and compromise their ability to cope with environmental stressors. She received a PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Bari in 2013 and a second PhD in Life Sciences from the University of Calabria in 2018, followed by postdoctoral fellowships. Since 2022, she has held a fixed-term Assistant Professor position at the same institution.

Adèle Léger

University of Ottawa

Adèle Léger is a PhD student at the University of Ottawa. She has been studying insect metabolism since 2020, focusing on how temperature affects mitochondrial respiration, enzyme activity, and reactive oxygen species production across multiple insect species. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 2022 and her Master’s in Biochemistry in 2025, both at the Université de Moncton. Her Master’s project examined how seasonal variation influences mitochondrial metabolism in honey bees. Her doctoral research aims to characterize the diversity of fuel utilization among bees and to investigate how ecological pressures and evolutionary history have shaped patterns of substrate preference across lineages.

Dr Jean-Paul  Paluzzi      

York University, Canada

Jean-Paul Paluzzi is an Associate Professsor in the Department of Biology, York University. Research in his lab is focused mainly on the molecular physiology and neuroendocrinology of blood-feeding human disease vector arthropods including mosquitoes. We aim to discern how hormone-induced control of visceral organs helps to regulate the biology of the whole organism. This includes signaling pathways related to development, energy balance, reproduction, and the fine-tuning of osmotic and ionic balance.

Prof. Kenneth Halberg

University of Copenhagen

Kenneth Halberg is an Associate Professor and group leader at University of Copenhagen. The research focus of his lab is to understand the molecular, cellular and network mechanisms by which insect adapt to different environmental challenges using the insect genetic model organisms Drosophila melanogaster and Tribolium castaneum.

Dr. Michael Berenbrink

University of Liverpool

Michael is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom. He obtained a doctorate in Natural Sciences at Düsseldorf University, Germany, then worked as Assistant Professor at Humboldt University, Berlin, before accepting his current position in Liverpool. Michael’s primary research interests lie in the Comparative and Evolutionary Physiology of Animals, where he uses the vertebrate oxygen transport chain as a model system for studying the evolution of mechanisms of environmental adaptation. He serves on the editorial board of four journals and has delivered over 40 invited presentations across the world.

Prof. Angela Fago

Aarhus University, Denmark,

Angela is a Professor in the Department of Biology, Section of Zoophysiology, at Aarhus University, Denmark. She studied Biology at Parma University, Italy, and received her PhD degree at Aarhus University working on structure-function relationships in fish haemoglobins. Angela's interest is to understand molecular mechanisms underlying hypoxia and anoxia tolerance in animals. In her work, she integrates classic whole animal physiology, biochemistry and molecular biology to unravel how globin-mediated oxygen transport and mitochondrial oxygen consumption are regulated at the molecular level, including the effect of gaseous signalling molecules H2S, NO and CO2.

Prof Thomas Hankeln

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany

Since 2001, Tom is a Professor of Molecular Biology in the Faculty of Biology, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. He studied  Biology and Geography at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, where he received the Dr. rer. nat. with work on non-coding repetitive DNA and gene families in insects. Tom is now mainly interested in the evolution and function of globin genes in animals, the molecular basis of hypoxia adaptation, longevity and cancer resistance in rodent models and the development of metagenomic approaches for food authentication.

Dr Diana Madeira

FCT Research Fellow, University of Aveiro

Diana Madeira became a Biologist in 2009 (University of Lisbon), subsequently enrolling in a M.Sc. in Marine Ecology at the same university. In 2012 she started a PhD in Sustainable Chemistry at NOVA University of Lisbon. In 2017 she joined the University of Aveiro as a post-doctoral research fellow in collaboration with the University of Québec in Rimouski. She is currently a Research Fellow at the University of Aveiro and her career has been devoted to the study of thermal tolerance in marine species, considering various time-scales (within and transgenerational), biological hierarchy levels (from molecules to ecosystems), and environmental contexts (single and multi-stressors).

Dr Piero Calosi

Université du Québec à

Piero Calosi completed his PhD in Animal Ecology and Ethology at the Università degli Studi di Firenze (Italy) in 2004. He subsequently worked in the UK, first at Royal Holloway (UK) as Postdoc (2004-2006), and then at Plymouth University as Leverhulme Trust (2006-2007) and RCUK Research Fellow (2007-2012), and Assistant Professor (2012-2014). Since 2014, he is at the Université du Québec à Rimouski (Canada), where he is Professor of Marine Global Change Biology and Evolutionary Physiology. His primary interest resides in the characterisation of marine invertebrates’ physiological capacity, plasticity and evolvability. He uses an integrative approach, working on different levels of the biological hierarchy, and validates findings in situ where possible.

 

Dr Elena Gissi

National Research Council, Institute of Marine Sciences Italy

Dr. Gissi is a Senior Scientist at CNR ISMAR and Co-Director of the Gendered Innovations in Science, Medicine, and Engineering project at Stanford University, USA. Her expertise lies in conservation biology and conservation planning for social-ecological systems, she has extensive experience in producing and integrating ecological insights in decision making processes. She has also developed the foundation for sex analysis and the gender dimension of research in biology and conservation, and environmental sciences.

Dr Valeria Marasco

Assistant Professor, University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Austria

Valeria´s research interests focus on understanding the physiological processes of energy metabolism underlying intraspecific life history variation. She mainly uses birds as study systems, with more recent work in other vertebrates. She did her PhD at the University of Glasgow, UK, on the neurophysiological and organismal effects of early-life exposure to glucocorticoids, where her interest in phenotypic plasticity began. She then did a post-doc at the University of Glasgow to investigate how environmental stress exposure shapes physiological resilience of ageing, reproductive senescence and survival, and how this can have multi-generational effects. After that, she moved to the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology in Vienna, Austria, for a post-doc fellowship on seasonal energy turnovers of avian migration, followed by a 2^nd fellowship linking this with early-life effects. She recently moved to the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology as Assistant Professor and, together with her young team, conducts projects to investigate physiological adaptations and vulnerability of wildlife to Anthropocene-generated environmental changes. She is originally from Italy. Outside work, she loves going on play trips with her little daughter. 

Dr Melissa Pespeni

University of Vermont

Melissa Pespeni is an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Vermont and recipient of the prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Dr. Pespeni is an evolutionary biologist whose work aims to understand the genetic bases of complex traits and how organisms adapt to current and future environmental variation. Particularly, work from her group is leading to discoveries on the roles of standing genetic, epigenetic, and microbiome variation in shaping phenotypes in ecologically foundational marine organisms. She publishes in the leading journals of her field including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Communications, and Proceedings of the Royal Society, and has given several keynote seminars at premier, international conferences. As a creator and leadership team member of the Biological Data Science (BilDS) graduate training program (formerly QuEST), Dr. Pespeni aims to shift the dialogue in higher education to focus on diverse lived experiences as assets and to offer broader training opportunities in graduate education such as improv for science communication and applied internships with non-academic partners. Dr. Pespeni received her Ph.D. in Biology from Stanford University and a B.S. in Biology and B.A. in Critical Gender Studies from the University of California, San Diego.

 

Ariel Camp

University of Liverpool

Ariel is a Lecturer in Musculoskeletal Biology at the University of Liverpool. She is a biomechanist using innovative 3D visualisation and animal models to study musculoskeletal mechanics at the interface between the head and body: the neck.

She completed her BSc in Marine Biology with a minor in technical theatre at Hofstra University (US). Her PhD developed new ways to see and measure muscle motion and 3D shape change in living animals with X-ray video. She discovered fish power feeding not with head muscles as expected, but almost entirely with the swimming muscles of the body. As a postdoctoral researcher, she developed this into a new framework for studying the anatomy, mechanics and evolution of fish body muscles as dual-function motors powering swimming and feeding.

She joined the University of Liverpool in 2018 on a BBSRC Discovery Fellowship, during which she overturned the idea that fish bodies only bend in 2D -- instead, fish move the backbone three-dimensionally and have a functional neck. Her research group at Liverpool is currently investigating 3D shape and deformation across the head-neck interface to understand the mechanics and evolution of neck motions, dynamic muscle and skin deformation, and bio-inspired robotic devices. 

Dr Rachel Tran

University of Liverpool

Rachel is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Liverpool, where she is currently working on the Pufferfish Inflation Project with Dr Ariel Camp. She earned her PhD in 2024 from the University of Leeds, where she used high-speed imaging to acquire high-precision wing, body, and leg kinematics of various insects during free flight. Before her doctoral studies, she completed an MSci at the Royal Veterinary College and worked as a research assistant, studying mouse muscle mechanics at both the muscle bundle and whole-animal levels. Rachel is passionate about building experimental setups, image processing, and the biomechanics of various animal behaviours across aquatic, aerial, and terrestrial environments.

Dr Kelsey Stilson

Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle

Kelsey is an evolutionary biomechanist with a focus on the head and neck region. He trained in XROMM techniques at both the University of Chicago (PhD) and Brown University (first Postdoc) in the United States. He also trained extensively in animal surgery and taught human anatomy for three years. He is a passionate believer in open-source software, hardware, and knowledge in general. Kelsey is currently a Postdoc with Pauline Provini at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris, France

Dr Sara Carolina Gusmão Coito Madeira

Assistant Professor, NOVA University of Lisbon (Portugal)

Carolina Madeira completed her PhD in Marine Biology and Aquaculture at the University of Lisbon (2018, Portugal). She is an integrated member of the Applied Molecular Biosciences Unit, and an Assistant Professor for Marine Molecular Biology at NOVA School of Science and Technology. Her research focuses on the impacts of global change on temperate and tropical systems from a molecules-to-ecosystem perspective across the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific Oceans. Her current research program, “Marine Omics for Ocean Resilience,” investigates the molecular response mechanisms and adaptive strategies of marine organisms to temperature, ocean acidification and hypoxia stress, and consequent biodiversity reorganization. She applies systems-biology and multilayer approaches to support marine-conservation efforts and foster innovation in aquaculture.

Catarina Maria Batista Vinagre

Assistant Professor, University of Algarve (Portugal)

Catarina Vinagre completed her PhD in Marine Biology at the University of Lisbon in 2007 and is currently Professor of Marine Biology at the University of Algarve (Portugal). Her research focuses on the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems, spanning levels of biological organisation from individual species to entire food webs. She has investigated the thermal tolerance of over 100 marine species, contributing to a deeper understanding of biodiversity responses to ocean warming. In addition, her work addresses the structure and functioning of shallow marine food webs—including those of tidepools, reefs, coastal lagoons, and open estuaries—and examines how changes in energy fluxes may lead to their reconfiguration.

Dr Carolyn Tepolt

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Carolyn is an Associate Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which she joined after postdoctoral research in biodiversity genomics at the Smithsonian Institution. She received a PhD from Stanford University in 2014,where she was based at the Hopkins Marine Station. Her research focuses on understanding how marine species adapt to changing environments on time scales of decades to centuries, and how dispersal and gene flow impact these adaptive strategies. She works extensively with marine invasive species, and integrates approaches from genomics, ecology, and physiology.

Dr Alice Leavey

University of Southampton

Dr. Leavey uses modern 3D imaging and deep learning approaches to enhance our understanding of animal form and function. She works with museums and imaging facilities to create "digital twins" of natural history collections for future research, education, and public outreach. As a postdoc in Dr Jeffrey Thompson's lab (University of Southampton), she currently explores how the sea urchin feeding apparatus has changed over the last 250 million years. Previously, she studied chameleon cranial development and the evolution of frog locomotion at UCL.  She also enjoys pedagogical research on how digital models facilitate learning in biological and veterinary sciences.  

Dr Jaimi Gray

University of Texas at Austin

Originally from South Australia, Dr. Jaimi Gray is an evolutionary biologist and 3D imaging specialist who works at The University of Texas High-Resolution X-ray Computed Tomography Facility (UTCT). She specialises in Diffusible iodine-based contrast-enhanced CT (diceCT) and enjoys creating CT-based educational resources. Previously, she worked on the NSF funded initiatives, the open Vertebrate (oVert) project and for the Non-Clinical Tomography Users Research Network (NoCTURN). She has extensive experience digitising objects from natural history collections and her research includes projects on reptile and amphibian anatomy, and CT and diceCT methodology.

Liv Monica Trondrud

CEFS-INRAE

 Monica Trondrud is an early-career researcher working on the ecological physiology of ungulates in the northern hemisphere. Her main interest is in using biologging tools to understand physiological and behavioural responses to environmental change under different contexts such as seasonal variations and reproductive events. She is currently working on individual variation in such responses and their impact on reproductive success. She has a great interest in biologging technology, big data management as well as reproducible and transparent science.

Dr Anusha Shankar

Assistant Professor, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Hyderabad

Anusha Shankar is an Assistant Professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Hyderabad in India. Her lab studies how tropical animals (sunbirds, nightjars, bats, moths) manage their energetic needs in changing environments. Previously, she studied hummingbird energy budgets, especially their use of torpor to save energy overnight. How do they regularly get cold (10°C), and rewarm safely, without damaging their organs? She wants to understand torpor across biological scales, from evolutionary to organismal to cellular. Anusha is a Maxwell-Hanrahan Field Biology Awardee, and has mentored 39 trainees on her projects. She loves salsa dancing!

Mari Aas Fjelldal

BatLab Finland (University of Helsinki) and BatLab Norway (Norwegian University of Life Sciences)

Mari A. Fjelldal is a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with both BatLab Finland and BatLab Norway. Her research focuses on the ecophysiology of torpor and hibernation, with a particular interest in how these energy-saving strategies help bats cope with seasonal and environmental challenges. By combining fieldwork and theoretical modelling approaches, she investigates how the interactions between environmental conditions and individual states influence patterns of metabolic suppression. Through her work across the Nordic region, Fjelldal has contributed to a deeper understanding of adaptive physiology and provides knowledge that is relevant for conservation of bats in a rapidly changing climate.

Peter Hubbard

Universidade do Algarve

Peter did his PhD at Sheffield University (UK), investigating renal handling of sodium by dopamine. Initiation into electrophysiology began during post-doctoral work at Manchester University (UK), investigating Dahlgren cell activity using ‘sharp electrode’ recording, followed by patch-clamping on 5-HT₃ receptors at the LMB (Cambridge, UK). At CCMAR (Portugal), he uses in vivo and in vitro electrophysiological (and other) techniques to investigate olfaction in fish and aquatic invertebrates – especially pheromones, but also inorganic cations - and the physiological and behavioural responses to such odorants. His ultimate aim is to ‘trace’ the whole pathway from cause (sensory detection) to effect (physiological and/or behavioural changes) for widely different stimuli

Dr. Cosima Porteus

Assistant Professor, University of Toronto Scarborough

Cosima Porteus received her BSc from the University of Guelph, Canada, majoring in Marine and Freshwater Biology. Early during her undergraduate degree, Cosima became involved in research on freshwater mussels, fish and salamanders and became fascinated by how aquatic animals cope with various environmental challenges. She stayed at the University of Guelph, where she earned her MSc in Integrative Biology under the supervision of Dr. Pat Wright, studying the parameters affecting the boundry layers and oxygen supply to developing fish. She then moved to the University of British Columbia, to start her PhD under the supervision of Dr Bill Milsom in the Department of Zoology. Her PhD thesis characterized time dependent changes that take place in the response to low oxygen in fish, highlighting the importance of peripheral oxygen chemoreceptors in establishing these time domains.   

As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Exeter under the supervision of Prof Rod Wilson, Cosima determined why fish exposed to ocean acidification lose their ability to respond appropriately to olfactory cues that are vital for their survival in the wild. The results of this research combined behaviour, electrophysiology and transcriptomics to show a novel mechanism for how ocean acidification affects the behaviour of fish through the olfactory system.  

She is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough, where her lab is continuing to study the effects and physiological mechanisms of anthropogenic stressors on aquatic animals. Her group have recently shown that ocean acidification negatively affects olfaction in Dungeness crabs, an economically important crustacean, in a similar way as in fish. These findings have wide implications for issues ranging from global food security, marine conservation to recreational and commercially-important fisheries. 

Prof. Massimo Emilio Maffei

Prof. Massimo Emilio Maffei is a plant physiologist and astrobiologist at the University of Turin, Italy. His research explores plants’ responses to stress and the production of bioactive molecules. His work focuses on polyphenols and terpenoids, evaluating their biosynthetic pathways and the expression of genes encoding key enzymes involved in secondary metabolite production. His studies also extend to the functional roles of these molecules, particularly their antibiotic and antiviral properties, as well as their molecular mechanisms of action in human cells.

Prof. Valeria Maselli

Prof. Valeria Maselli is a zoologist working on animal biology and biodiversity, with a strong focus on marine organisms, particularly cetaceans and cephalopods. Her research integrates classical zoological approaches with advanced molecular and non-invasive methodologies for applications in conservation genetics and biodiversity monitoring.

Dr. Pauline Provini

Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle

Pauline Provini is a permanent researcher at the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) in Paris, France. Her research, which combines 3D kinematics and shape analysis in a phylogenetic context, aims to gain insight into the evolution of vertebrate form and function. She is particularly interested in the functional morphology of avian locomotion and song. During her PhD, she emphasised the prominent role of the legs in the evolution of avian flight and locomotion in general. She continued her research on avian locomotion as a postdoctoral fellow at the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, where she studied the anatomy of avian hind limbs to better understand the evolution of hopping and walking locomotion. In 2020, she was awarded a long-term fellowship from the Centre for Research and Interdisciplinarity in Paris, France, to develop her team. Her group, currently based at the MNHN, is investigating the biomechanics of birdsong and complex communication, one of the amazing abilities we share with birds.

 

Dr. Jack Thomson

University of Liverpool

I am a marine biologist working at the University of Liverpool, UK. My work focuses on the links between animal personality and stress physiology, using animal models ranging from fish to anemones, and everything in between. This work helps me answer questions about the diversity of animal responses to their environment, which may include climate change, pollutants, and even other animals (friend or foe). I love getting out into the field, but also use a range of lab techniques, including omics, to really get to the nitty-gritty of these questions.