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A workshop, funded by the National Science Foundation and private sponsors, will be held at the Pennsylvania State University on April 4 and 5, 2009. On Friday, April 3, some of the workshop participants will present a symposium that is open to the public. The talks will cover a variety of topics related to wildlife conservation and maintenance of species diversity, with an emphasis on how cutting-edge technologies for analyzing genomes can help to prevent species extinctions.

The workshop will bring experts in wildlife conservation and high-throughput genomic technologies together with officials from museums and funding agencies. Among the issues to be discussed are the following:

• Scientific questions about extinction that can be addressed by genomic methods
• Species-conservation efforts
• Genomic technologies relevant to studying extinction
• Museum specimen availability and methods of preparing ancient DNA for sequencing
• Potential sources of funding

The workshop's ultimate goal is to prepare a written report that can help to guide scientists and funding agencies in advancing work in this area.

This website collects information about the workshop and the public symposium preceding it. In addition, the site contains photographs from the follow-up workshop held in San Diego, December 5,6, 2009.