Denis was elected a Council Member of the Willi Hennig Society
A Triple Honor: Fellow Nomination, Council Election, and Bringing the Willi Hennig Society to UNC Charlotte in 2028
I am thrilled to share three major milestones regarding my involvement with the Willi Hennig Society, the premier international organization for phylogenetic systematics.
First, I am deeply honored to announce that I was nominated as a Fellow of the Willi Hennig Society in 2025. Following this nomination, I was elected to serve on the Society’s Council. Joining the leadership of an organization that has defined my field is a professional highlight, but the third announcement is the one I am most excited about for our community here in Charlotte.
We are bringing the Willi Hennig Society Annual Meeting to UNC Charlotte in 2028.
Why This Matters
For those outside the immediate field, the Willi Hennig Society (founded in 1980) is not just another academic group; it is the forum where the science of phylogenetic systematics was forged. It was founded and run by the most relevant phylogeneticists and biogeographers of all time—scientists without whom our field effectively would not exist.
The Society’s influence extends far beyond biology. In his seminal book Science as a Process (1988), philosopher David Hull used this very community—the cladists of the Willi Hennig Society—as his primary model. He argued that science advances through an evolutionary mechanism driven by social and intellectual interactions, showing how the rigorous debates within this society fostered the objective retention of valid scientific knowledge.
Today, the Society continues that tradition of rigor. It brings together diverse researchers — from paleontologists to conservation biologists — to debate systematic practices and their applications within a cladistic framework. The Society’s journal, Cladistics, remains a powerhouse in the field with an Impact Factor of 6.2, an iteScore of 9.9, a 54% acceptance rate, and an average of 41 days from acceptance to publication. The status of the Cladistics journal reflects the vital importance of empirical work and the high standard of research our members produce.
More About The Cladistics Journal
Cladistics publishes comprehensive research on systematics, and is read by scientists working in evolution, systematics, and integrative biology.
Our journal encourages debate on all aspects of the field - from philosophy to empirical studies. We study biodiversity in biogeography, coevolution, conservation biology, ontogeny, genomics, and paleontology. We have a consistently high position in the ISI rankings for evolutionary biology and zoology. Cladistics is published on behalf of the Willi Hennig Society.
Click here to read more about the journal
Looking Ahead to 2028
Hosting the annual meeting in 2028 is a significant win for UNC Charlotte and the Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics. The Society holds its meetings worldwide to ensure global access, often accompanied by affordable workshops to promote education in phylogenetics and biogeography.
By bringing this international gathering to Charlotte, we are placing our university at the center of the conversation in systematics. It will be an incredible opportunity to showcase our research, support our students (who are eligible for the Society’s student awards), and foster the exchange of ideas that David Hull so famously described.
I look forward to serving on the Council and working with my colleagues to make the 2028 meeting a landmark event for our department and the university.
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