MARQUETTE, Mich.—Northern Michigan University will present a seminar on what role biology plays in learning from nuclear disasters at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 24, in Jamrich Hall room 105.
           

Taras Oleksyk, an assistant professor of biology at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, will use Russia’s 1986 Chernobyl and Japan’s 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disasters—the only level 7 events on the International Nuclear Event Scale to ever take place—to discuss what can be learned through biological research in the wake of such catastrophes.

A native of Ukraine, Oleksyk earned his doctorate from the University of Georgia, where his research focused on genetic consequences of the Chernobyl disaster.  He went on to work at the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity at the National Cancer Institute where he worked on genetic epidemiology of infectious diseases, including HIV and HCV. His interests are in the genetic epidemiology, evolutionary genetics and comparative genomics.  Specifically, he is interested in genome evolution and its implication to adaptation and human disease. 

This presentation is free and open to the public. For more information contact the biology department at 227-2310.