Biosystematics, informatics and genomics of the big 4 insect groups: training tomorrow's researchers and entrepreneurs

Miroslav Valan

Miroslav Valan is currently working in the Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics at the Swedish Museum of Natural History (SMNH) and Savantic AB both from Stockholm, Sweden. His BIG4 project is "Accelerating taxonomic research using image recognition systems and citizen science contribution". The project is supervised by Fredrik Ronquist (SMNH) and co-supervised by Atsuto Maki (KTH University) and Nuria Albet Torres (Savantic AB).
 
Miroslav graduated from University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina where he received a degree Doctor of veterinary medicine (2006-2013). During undergraduate studies he was an exchange student in New York and Maine, USA in (2011-12, 10 months in total) and he also did an internship at the Faculty of Veterinary medicine, Istanbul University, Turkey (2012, one month).
 
After graduation he was a PhD student for the next two years at University of Veterinary and Pharmaceutical Sciences Brno (2013-15). In years spent in Brno he gained expertise on taxonomy and systematics of chewing lice (Phthiraptera) under the guidance of Dr. Oldrych Sychra, and expanded his skills during monthly research stays at Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Washington D.C., USA (2014) and Russian Academy of Sciences, Zoological Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia (2014), and field trips to Honduras (2014) and several European countries.
 
Miroslav strive to be a modern taxonomist, armed with multidisciplinary skills in genetics, statistics and computer science but keeping good practices from morphology-based alpha taxonomy. 

Find out more about his project: "Accelerating taxonomic research using image recognition systems and citizen science contribution"

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