London Calling 2024 - Speakers
Speakers
Check out the line up of speaking at London Calling 2024.
Oxford Nanopore Technologies
Mrinalini Watsa
![Mrinalini Watsa](https://a.storyblok.com/f/196663/500x500/a7b4a88519/mrinalini-watsa.png/m/350x0/filters:format(webp))
- Job title
- Institution
- San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, USA
- Biography
Mrinalini Watsa is a research scientist with the Conservation Science Team at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. Her primary focus is applying low-cost field genomics tools, like nanopore sequencing, in tropical field labs to enhance biodiversity and disease surveillance. She is also developing affordable conservation tech, such as animal-mounted collars and microchip-based sensors, for wildlife monitoring. She earned her bachelor’s degree in biology from Grinnell College in Iowa and her doctorate in biological anthropology from Washington University in Saint Louis.
- Recent publications
Watsa, M. and Wildlife Disease Surveillance Focus Group. Rigorous wildlife disease surveillance. Science. 369(6500):145–147 (2020). DOI: 10.1126/science.abc0017
Watsa, M., Erkenswick, G.A., Pomerantz, A., and Prost, S. Portable sequencing as a teaching tool in conservation and biodiversity research. PLoS Biol. 18(4):p.e3000667 (2020). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000667
Arana, A., et al. Lack of local genetic representation in one of the regions with the highest bird species richness, the Peruvian Amazonia. Plos one. 19(1): p.e0296305 (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0296305