Title: Phylogenetic Trees, Networks and Squirrels
Speaker: Mark Jones (Middlesex University, London)
April 16, 2026. Thursday. 3PM. TG23.
Abstract: Phylogenetic trees and networks are directed graphs representing the evolutionary histories of animals/plants/viruses/etc. Reconstructing these histories is a huge interdisciplinary project combining biology, statistics, algebra, graph theory, algorithm design and software engineering (and probably others). It has important applications in medicine, epidemiology and conservation.
In this talk I will present some recent results and software for fast computation of simple phylogenetic networks. Along the way, I will give a whirlwind tour of phylogenetic networks, genetic evolution and the challenges involved in reconstructing the past from a few strings of DNA.
Bio: Mark Jones is a Lecturer in Computer Science at Middlesex University London. Their research careers includes positions at TU Delft and CWI in the Netherlands, Université de Montpellier in France, and Royal Holloway, University of London. Their research focuses on problems in phylogenetics, the fields concerned with inferring evolutionary histories from genetic data. Much of their research involves the development of fixed-parameter tractable (FPT) algorithms to tackle NP-hard problems.