FARMINGTON — Chris Brinegar, adjunct associate professor in the University of Maine at Farmington’s Division of Natural Sciences, will be keynote speaker for the biodiversity and natural products session of the International Conference on Biosciences and Biotechnology in Kathmandu, Nepal, from Feb. 4-6.

Brinegar’s research specialty is plant phylogeography, the study of the geographic distribution of genetic lineages in plant populations. The genetic data resulting from this research can shed light on plant species evolution, assess biodiversity and help identify populations in need of conservation.

His talk will summarize his genetics research on Cinchona officinalis that he conducted during a recent Fulbright fellowship in Ecuador. Tree species in the genus Cinchona are a rich source of quinine, an anti-malarial drug, and were among the first plants in the New World to suffer from overexploitation after Spanish colonization. Brinegar’s lecture will also describe how genetic studies can guide conservation approaches for threatened and endangered plant species which produce commercially-important natural products.

Brinegar has taught ecology, environmental science and biochemistry at UMF since 2006. He has twice been named a Fulbright scholar to pursue his teaching and research: in the Biotechnology Department at Kathmandu University in Nepal in 2008 and at the Technical University of Loja in the Andes Mountains of southern Ecuador in 2014.

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