"Interdisciplinary solutions to Evolutionary Challenges in Food, Health and the Environment"
This is an international colloquium of applied and basic evolutionary biologists, policymakers, industry and governmental representatives. It will take place January 3-8, 2010 on Heron Island, Queensland, Australia. Participation is by invitation and inquiries of institutional partnership are welcome.

About the Summit
For four-and-one-half days international experts, practitioners, stakeholders and policymakers in the areas of Food, Health, the Environment and Sustainability will convene to design the way forward for effective, integrative applied evolutionary biology. 

Tom Smith- 'Environment' Keynote Speaker
Sept 22- Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA, Dr. Smith is also the Director of the Center for Tropical Research, a part of the UCLA Institute of the Environment. He will speak on 'Evolutionary management of ecosystems & biodiversity'. With over 100 publications, Tom has developed a new theory of tropical biodiversification along transitions from one habitat to another. With climate change threatening large-scale shifts in species distributions and the habitats on which they depend, the hotspots of today may not be the hotspots of tomorrow. Smith's research points to new and more effective ways of prioritizing regions for conservation. 

R. Ford Denison- 'Food' Keynote Speaker
Sept 21- Professor Denison (Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota) will speak on 'Darwinian agriculture: past tradeoffs present opportunities'. He combines his interests in agricultural sustainability and evolution in the study of crop-microbe symbioses. Ford is author of the blog 'This Week in Evolution'. His book Darwinian Agriculture' will be published in 2010. 

Sir Peter Gluckman- 'Health' Keynote Speaker
Sept 7- Professor Sir Peter Gluckman KNZM, MBChB, MMedSc, DSc, FRACP, FRCPCH, FRSNZ, FMedSci, FRS, of the University of Auckland, will speak on "Applying evolutionary principles to improving human health". Dr. Gluckman is the first-ever Chief Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of New Zealand. He is the author of over 500 scientific papers and reviews and editor of eight books. He is author of 'Mismatch - why our world no longer fits our bodies' (Oxford, 2006), which describes how our bodies are not keeping pace with the rate at which we have redesigned the world we now inhabit. His 'Principles of Evolutionary Medicine' (Oxford University Press, 2009) is the first textbook on the subject. 

Why this Summit, now?
August 23- The natural world is not idly standing by as people alter the planet: over timescales of decades and less, myriad organisms are evolving and adapting to human-caused environmental change.