August 2022
- I am now a Senior Scientific Consultant at BioTeam (since January 2021). Stay tuned ....
July 2020
- I have left the University of Western Australia to pursue building The Cassava Virus Action Project full-time. Check there for more frequent updates.
November 2019
- Professor Jane Polston visits from the University of Florida to learn Oxford Nanopore sequencing.
- Tara Sharma finishes her Honors!
- Laura attends the WIRED 25 conference in San Francisco watch the video here and read about it here.
- Laura presents at the Biology of Genomes Workshop in Sydney
October 2019
- Laura selected as one of WIRED25 - 25 people racing to save us
- Laura's TED talk is LIVE on TED.com
Photo Credit: Ryan Lash/TED
September 2019
- Tonny Kinene has been awarded his PhD!
- Pore Safari #2 happened in Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sierra Leone. We trained over 130 scientists, met the President of Sierra Leone and completed two research projects .
August 2019
- Our new paper is on BioRxiv: Tree Lab: Portable genomics for early detection of plant viruses and pests in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Laura attends the SciFoo Conference at Google in Mountain View, California.
- Laura gives a TED talk at TED Summit in Scotland on using technology to help farmers in E. Africa.
- A new video from Nvidia!
July 2019
- Laura and CVAP team attend and present at the Oxford Nanopore Conference in London.
- Tonny has a new job at DPIRD in Western Australia
- Laura prepares for a trip to SciFoo at Google and giving a TED Talk in Scotland!
May 2019
- New paper with collaborators in DR Congo!
- Tonny Kinene submitted his PhD for examination!
- The Cassava Virus Action Project is named one of Fast Company's world changing ideas.
- Tara does her first nanopore run!
- Laura attends TED 2019
March 2019
- 2 new publications!
- A story about our work in PNAS!
- 7 new CBSV genomes from Mozambique.
- Tara Sharma joins the team for her Honours project on whiteflies and Nanopore technology.
- Laura travels to Tanzania and trains scientists at TARI- Selian
- Laura travels to Uganda to showcase the utility of Nanopore technology at the invitation of the East African Community.
February 2019
- Our video is out now!
- High Performance Computing outlets HPCwire and InsideHPC covered the story
- New paper out on Legume viruses in Kenya.
- Article on our collaboration with Professor Ateka in Kenya.
January 2019
- Great start to 2019 with 5 news stories about our Cassava Virus Action Project!
- 2 new papers published!
December 2018
- Check out the blog with a wrap up of 2018. A very good year for our team!
November 2018
- Featured on the Nvidia blog.
- Completed Pore Safari with the Nanopore team. We interacted with over 250 students from 30 institutions in Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia.
- Featured on the Zambian evening news!
- Laura spoke at the Nanopore Day in Singapore.
October 2018
- Lab successfully hosted the 3rd International Whitefly Meeting in Perth!
- Lab hosts Dr. Peter Sseruwagi, Dr. Patrick Chikoti and Ms. Cathy Gwandu at UWA.
- New paper published in JEE on whitefly diversity in Malaysia.
- Updated video on Asha's harvest. Longer version in progress.
- New article on the promega connections website.
- Dr. Jo Stanton has 2 articles here and here about our Tree Lab!
August 2018
- A few more papers published- congrats Bruno and James!
- Cassava Virus Action Project goes next level with sample collection to answer in 4 hours, no power, no internet, completely off the grid. Huge shout-out to Dr. Jo Stanton for her PDQeX DNA extraction machine and Oxford Nanopore for the MinIT. 3 tree labs in 3 weeks in 3 different countries (Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda.
- The team attended the Evolution meetings in France. We hosted the African Systematics Session.
July 2018
- The team hosted Tony Bakelana from Democratic Republic of Congo- we analyzed NGS of infected cassava from DRC- stay tuned.
- Three high school students from Laura's hometown, Phoenix, Arizona visited for 2 weeks and helped with social media.
- Cray Supercomputing flew to Perth from the USA to film us. Stay tuned!
- Congrats to James one of his PhD chapter's being published here.
- Our real-time nanopore sequencing paper is out on F1000 here.
June 2018
- Laura receives an Honorary Doctorate from the Open University for her years of inclusive work on whiteflies devastating farmers globally.
- Our pre-print on using nanopore for food security in E. Africa is out!
- Titus and Laura attend and present at the London Calling 2018 and represent the CVAP team.
March-April 2018
- Laura visited University of Otago, New Zealand and delivered a public lecture.
- CVAP website updated
- New publication on the naming of Africa B. tabaci species!
- Laura attends TED in Vancouver and hosts a Jeffersonian dinner on "Food security and technology".
- kinenetonny.wixsite.com/researchTonny updated his website!
- TED Fellows react to the latest Steven Pinker book.
- Nice article from the Crawford fund about our work in Kenya.
February 2018
- Zambian UCBSV paper below.
| rabson.pdis-11-17-1707-re_first_look.pdf |
- We wrote a blog for F1000 for the new mtCOI reference data set!
- Anders Savill moves to the CSIRO Pawsey Supercomputer Centre but will still remain connected with us!
- Updated two new papers accepted.
- Successful trip to use Nanopore sequencing in Kenya! See our Cassava Virus Action Project updates!
January 2018
- Laura visits Mr. G's science class at South Point High School in Phoenix Arizona to discuss science!
- Laura also visits the homeless USA veterans at Justa Center.
- Team gearing up for more #sequencing4farmers in Kenya
- Laura gives a presentation in the Cassava Genomics session at the Plant and Animal Genome Conference in San Diego, CA.
December 2017
- 2017 highlights!
- Single whitefly transcriptome paper published in Gates Open Research.
November 2017
- Laura wins the Gifted Citizen 2017 Grand Prize in Mexico as part of the CDI festival.
- New paper out in PlosOne published showing strong evidence for aphids as the vector for CBSV and not whiteflies!
- Laura gave a keynote at Computational Molecular Biology Symposium in Ireland.
- Video made for world food day.
- Our work is featured in The economist.
October 2017
- Laura is named a Gifted Citizen! 30 selected globally out of 1700 applications!
- Tonny and James featured on the UWA website
- 2 new publications added!
- Tonny Kinene attended the Science Protecting Plant Health Conference in Brisbane, Australia.
- Laura featured on the UWA webpage for World Food day.
- ECU in Western Australia wrote about our cassava virus action project.
- Laura attended women in STEM lunch at UWA
August- September 2017
- Exciting two months!
- The team was featured on the Western Australian science news source Particle!
- Laura traveled to Brazil to visit Bruno and Renate and gave 3 presentations.
- Laura and Joseph Ndunguru attended TED Global in Tanzania and gave two workshops on the future of food security they also met Sauti Sol!
- THEN we launched the epic new project to bring Nanopore sequencing to E. Africa!!!! Cassava Virus Action Project!
- We then traveled to Oxford where we gave the Nanopore team a presentation on the project!
- And we stayed London and were featured on the BBC World News GMT and also BBC radio.
- Featured on the TED Fellows Blog!
July 2017
- Collaborative work with the Cassava Disease Diagnostic team featured on CNN!
- Article on the future of HPC in Australia.
- Laura and collaborator Sunadda put on "Workshop on Whitefly Vectors of Plant Viruses" at the Department of Agriculture in Thailand.
- Whiteflybase updated and re-ran analyses of the Manani, et al. 2017 publication.
- Laura speaks at "Feed the Future Event" at UWA
- Sarina features Laura at her "Night of notables" at Scarborough Elementary, Perth Australia.
June 2017
- James Wainaina's paper published in BER
- Laura attends the first ever Senior TED Fellow Salon in NYC.
- Laura visits Borman Middle School in Phoenix, Arisona to encourage young women in STEM.
May 2017
- Support our crowdfunding campaign to bring Bioinformatics training to Kenya.
- Laura featured on the UWA Be Inspired Campaign
- Elijah Ateka and Laura featured in the Daily Nation paper of Kenya!
- Laura attends TED in Vancouver!!
- Featured in the Pelican Magazine of UWA.
April 2017
- Support our crowdfunding campaign to bring Bioinformatics training to Kenya.
- Laura attends Solution Summit Bootcamp sponsored by the UN and the University of Denver.
March 2017
- IWS3 is happening in Perth 16-21 September 2018.
- Myriam Rodrigues graduates from UWA!
- Laura gives a seminar at St. George's College formal dinner night.
- James Wainaina's greenhouse whitefly paper accepted to BER!
- Stephen Lamb joins the lab to do his honors degree- he is a pure mathematician who will be finding better ways to analyze Nanopore sequence data.
- New paper out with Professor Ateka and Duke Manani out cassava whiteflies in Kenya!
- Laura featured here
February 2017
- Anders updates the whiteflybase dev blog.
- Laura is invited to the United Nations/University of Denver bootcamp to end extreme poverty by 2030.
- James attends Taming the Beast Workshop in New Zealand
- Laura and collaborator Monica attend nanopore sequencing camp in Melbourne.
- Laura gives an invited talk at Lorne Genomics.
January 2017
- Laura is named a Senior TED Fellow! Featured in several places- National news (news.com.au) and the Herald Sun and 9News and on the UWA page and the Daily Telegraph and ABC Rural Radio and Gets.
December 2016
- 2016 was a great year for our lab! So grateful to the funders and collaborators who inspire us to work for farmers!
- Completed field season in Uganda.
- Laura attended The Atlantic Dialogues conference in Morocco
- Collaborator Prof. Laura Kubatko is featured on the OSU site!
- Everyone in the lab takes a break!
November 2016
- Our new paper is out!
- AND a new blog post about our paper and the awesome team that made it happen.
- Featured on the Cray Supercomputer website for "Amazing Impact".
- The team attended the ACWP BMGF Anual Meeting in Malawi
- Tonny and Laura traveled to Uganda and spent time with farmers.
October 2016
- Monica Kehoe makes the most EPIC video of our last trip to Dr. Ndunguru's village in Mbinga Tanzania. See it here.
- Laura attends the Cassava Disease Diagnostics BMGF annual meeting in Zambia.
- Laura and Tonny Kinene attend & present research at the International Congress of Entomology in Orlando, Florida
- Laura attends the International Entomology Leadership Summit in Orlando Florida
- Professor Renate Krause-Sakate from Botucatu, Brazil visits the lab!
- Sunadda Chaovalit from Thailand is visiting the lab to learn Molecular Diagnostics!
September 2016
- Anders's starts a blog for whiteflybase.org development!
- Featured on TEDxSpotlights: Nutrition.
August 2016
- Laura presents at the Western Australia Insect Study Society- Utility of DNA barcoding to identify insects.
- Tonny returns from the Workshop on Molecular Evolution.
- Laura and James go to the 2016 UWA Faculty of Science Rising Star event and pass the baton to the next winner!
- Featured on the Crawford Fund webpage for our training on whitefly identification with Prof. Elijah Ateka (JKUAT, Kenya) and The African Prisons Project.
July 2016
- Laura attend the TED Summit in Banff, Canada to discuss cassava whitefly research with the global TED community
- Jeanine Umfuyisoni, MSc student from Rwanda visits the lab to analyze her CBSD data.
- Lab hosts 5 young scientists
- Laura gives a talk at Microsoft in Perth for the Australian Computing Society
June 2016
- Laura's TEDxPerth talk is LIVE!!
- Delivered MacPro to Mikocheni Agricultural Research Institute in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
- Conducted Capacity Building in Bioinformatics Tools for Species Identification at JKUAT in Nairobi with Prof. Elijah Ateka- Funding from Crawford Fund!
- Cassava virus and cassava virus training at Kamiti Medium Security Prison in Kenya with the support of African Prisons Project
- Team presented at the Pawsey Roadshow
May 2016
- Our paper on rates of evolution of Cassava brown streak virus is now on BioRxiv!
- Cassava Warriors- an article and video written by UWA research and innovation office!
- An article written in the lead up to Laura's Pint of Science talk here.
- We welcome undergraduate exchange student Ammar Ghalab from University of Alberta to the lab for 3 months.
April 2016
- Our chapter on rooting phylogenetic trees is published.
- We won funding from the Crawford Fund to put on a bioinformatics training with Prof. Elijah Ateka at JKUAT in Kenya 4-14 June 2016.
- Laura did an interview with Abi, a 13 year old interested in cassava whitefly see it here.
March 2016
- Hosted Professor Laura Kubatko for two weeks and we worked on species trees for B. tabaci species and cassava brown streak diseases.
- Prof. John Colvin also visited and we talked African cassava whiteflies!
- I recorded a radio interview for ABC radio- see file below.
| abcradio.fullinterview.m4a |
February 2016
- Boykin lab took an epic trip to Tanzania and Uganda for an entire month. Visiting smallholder farmers, collecting whiteflies and delivering 2 bioinformatics training courses at MARI in TZ and NaCRRI in UG (a few pics below)
- Entire lab presented research at the International Whitefly Symposium in Arusha, Tanzania.
- An article written in Scientific Computing World magazine here.
- Our conversation piece on how we see the work in W. Africa on Ebola will help us fight the cassava viruses in English here and French here.
- Plus we welcome Bruno De Marchi to the Boykin lab who is doing a sandwich PhD from Brazil. He will be studying the whitefly genetic diversity in Brazil.
January 2016
- Associate Professor Elijah Ateka from Jomo Kenyatta Agriculture and Technology University visited us for 3 weeks! We hunted CBSV/UCBSV whole genomes.
December 2015
- Paper accepted to MPE - Acacia phylogenomics with Anna Williams (who just submitted her PhD!)
- Tonny Kinene successfully presented his PhD research proposal.
- Laura B. and Tonny attend the BMGF African Cassava Whitefly Annual Meeting in London.
- Featured on the Future-ish: 2015 Stylish Scientists List!
November 2015
- Laura B. gave a talk at TEDxPerth.
- Updated Feature on the TED Blog here.
- Professor Laura Kubatko visiting the lab from Ohio State University
- Jamisse Amisse, PhD student, visiting from Mozambique
- James Mushayija visting from Rwanda as part of the African/Australia CRC Plant Biosecurity Program read about his visit here.
- Article from UNM
October 2015
- So excited our joint paper on the deadly cassava viruses is out in PloOne!
- Featured on White House Blog on Laura's recent trip the the UN.
- Solutions Summit UN feature
- Honored to be featured as one of the '12 Badass Women in Science" on Medium. The photos below.
- Our local paper in Perth wrote a story too.
- We were on the ABC 7pm news on 12 October! Here is the story.
- Gizmodo article about our work.
- Podcast Solutions for cassava.
September 2015
- Laura was selected to attend and present at the United Nations Solutions Summit as part of the UN's adoption of the 17 Global Goals to ending extreme poverty- ideas blog article.
- Lab attended the Australian Plant Virology Workshop.
- Featured on the UWA Students Facebook page
- Featured in the Scientific Computing Blog
- Attended the TED Fellows Retreat in Asilomar, California. Conducted a workshop on "Navigating Academia".
August 2015
- First prize at the Rising Stars UWA Faculty of Science event (pic on the right)!
- Solomon Maina successfully presented his PhD research at the CRC Plant Biosecurity Annual meeting on the Gold Coast, Australia.
- Tonny Kinene's MSc. research on Cassava Brown Streak Virus has been published.
- Featured on the Change Maker UWA Alumni webpage.
July 2015
- Excited to be featured by Cray, the supercomputer giant, see the article here: http://www.cray.com/sites/default/files/CS-Cray-Pawsey-XC40-Whitefly.pdf as a case study for the CrayXC series.
- James Wainaina successfully presented his PhD proposal seminar on his work to control Bemisia tabaci species on common bean in Kenya! Yay James!
June 2015
- Solomon Maina successfully completed his PhD proposal seminar.
- Tonny Kinene has arrived from Uganda to begin his PhD studies supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
- Successful EMBL PhD Bioinformatic session completed with special guest Dr. Jen Taylor from CSIRO and Dr. Kat Holt from Univ. Melbourne
- Dr. Titus Alicai, Principal Research Officer (Plant Virologist)/Programme Leader, Root Crops Research Programme, National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO), National Crops Resources Research Institute (NaCRRI), Kampala, Uganda is visiting the lab for 3 weeks!
James Wainaina, Laura Boykin, Titus Alicai, Solomon Maina, Tonny Kinene. Garden City Mall, Perth.
May 2015
- Featured on Wired.co.uk one of the TED Fellows changing the world in 2015.
- James Wainaina has headed to Kenya to collect whiteflies in W. Kenya.
- Very excited to have the African Cassava whitefly research highlighted on the TED blog!
- UWA News article about team S'tawi found here.
- We are excited to announce that our latest exciting project, Whiteflybase has been announced as a finalist for the 24th annual WAITTA INCITE Awards. Our project has been named a Student Award finalist in the Undergraduate Tertiary Student Category, and winners will be announced at the event on June 19, 2015. This premier industry event has been hosted by the WA Information Technology and Telecommunications Alliance (WAITTA) since 1991, and aims to recognise outstanding performance and contributions made by members of Western Australia’s ICT community. For more information on the WAITTA INCITE Awards you can visit their website on the following link: http://www.inciteawards.org.au/. Congrats Team S'tawi!
April 2015
- TED2015- Featured on Medium as "11 Up-and-Coming Scientists You Need to Know".
March 2015
Photo credit: Ryan Lash/TED
- I gave a talk at TED 2015. The experience changed my life.
- See an article written by the executive editor of Scientific American about the research: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2015/03/23/the-science-of-ted-2015/
- Inception meeting in Uganda for our BMGF African Cassava Whitefly Project.
February 2015
- Trip to Tanzania and Uganda.
January 2015
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James and Solomon
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November - December 2014
- I am named a TED Fellow 2015! Food security/cassava/whiteflies and viruses will step into the light. See news story here and here.
- Drs. Peter Sseruwagi and Joseph Ndunguru from Mikocheni Agricultural Research Institute, Tanzania came to visit UWA to work on cassava viruses and whitefly NGS analyses.
- The Pawsey Petascale Bioinformatics was a huge success! Thank you to my co-chair Rebecca Hartman-Baker for the team work.
- Solomon Maina will be arriving from the Biosciences of East and Central Africa (BeCA, Nairobi, Kenya) Jan. 2015 to start his PhD on viruses in N. Australia.
October 2014:
- Launch of http://www.whiteflybase.org.
September 2014:
- Co-organizing the Pawsey Petscale Bioinformatics Symposium, visited CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, Canberra, whitefly mtCOI database nearing completion.
August 2014:
- It has been a very good month- 1 paper published, 1 paper accepted, and James Wainaina is coming to UWA to start a PhD with me in Jan. 2015!
July 2014:
- Amazing trip to Nairobi, Kenya for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Agricultural Connections Workshop (pictures below).
May 2014:
- Very excited to be heading to Kenya in June to take part in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Agricultural Research Connections Workshop.
January 2014:
- Research highlighted in University of Western Australia's energy and minerals institute newsletter.
| uwa_2167_brochure.pdf |
- Paper accepted to Pest Management Science: Polston, J.E., P.J. De Barro and L.M. Boykin. 2013. Transmission specificities of plant viruses with the newly identified species of the Bemisia tabaci species complex.
- Presentation on food insecurity caused by B. tabaci to the All Arizona School Retirees Association (AASRA) Westside Unit. Phoenix, Arizona.
December 2013:
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- Paper accepted to Pest Management Science: Boykin, L.M. 2013. Bemisia tabaci nomenclature: Lessons learned. Pest Management Science. Dec. 2013
- Great meeting with Maimouna before she heads back to Zambia. Hopeful for our CultiAF grant to come through.
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Updated August 27, 2022 |