AGM and Annual Address
AGM
The AGM will be in the late afternoon of Wednesday 9th December.
Annual Address
The Annual Address will follow the AGM and will be delivered by Professor Anjali Goswami FRS (Natural History Museum). Anjali is currently serving as the Chief Scientific Advisor and Director General for Science, Data and Analysis at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), a UK Government ministerial department. The title and abstract are below.
The shape of life: a deep-time perspective
Why do some species survive extreme changes in their environment and quickly exploit new opportunities, while others are consigned to the fossil record? Why do some diversify into highly varied forms, while others potter along at low numbers, seemingly unchanged for millions of years? Why do groups that dominate global ecosystems disappear suddenly, allowing minor players to take the lead? As we enter a period of unprecedented environmental change, lessons from the past have never been more important. In this talk, evolutionary biologist Prof. Anjali Goswami FRS will explore the evolutionary paths that have shaped life on Earth over hundreds of millions of years. With examples spanning single-celled organisms to dinosaurs, she will explain how her lab’s research uses new technologies, especially imaging and AI, to piece together the pace of evolutionary change across diverse species and to understand what determines which ones can keep up.