I’m Sarah Gerken, Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Much of my research focuses on cumaceans (also known as comma shrimp). The common name comma comes from cumaceans looking like commas, and some of them are even about the same size as a comma, although most of them are at least a bit larger. Despite being commonly encountered in benthic samples, cumaceans are not very well known to most people, so I have worked on cumaceans from all over the world as well as now working on fossil cumaceans. I have lived in Alaska for more than 20 years and have been doing research in the Antarctic recently along with Kevin Kocot. I expect October in Germany will be delightful!

I’m an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and the Curator of Invertebrate Zoology at the Alabama Museum of Natural History at the University of Alabama. Most of my research has focused on molluscs and higher-level lophotrochozoan phylogeny, but I’m interested in weird invertebrates of all types, especially meiofauna (microscopic animals living between grains of sand). I got into peracarids through a collaboration with Sarah Gerken working on the genomics of Antarctic cumaceans and now I’m excited about a new project with Sarah and Regina Wetzer (and collaborators) on the higher-level phylogeny of Peracarida. I will share techniques related to the sampling of marine meiofauna and talk about peracarid genomics/phylogenomics during the workshop. www.kocotlab.com

Les Watling is Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii and University of Maine. His work on crustaceans has spanned a number of groups, but mostly within the Peracarida including cumaceans, amphipods, and spelaeogriphaceans. He is also interested in crustacean functional morphology and life styles. In recent years he has also been working on the taxonomy and functional design of deep-sea octocorals.