Starship transposable elements are massive mobile regions of DNA that are widespread across filamentous fungi and have important impacts of evolution and adaptation. We have built a number of pipelines to search fungal genomes for Starship elements through comparative genomic approaches and are continuing to explore the genomic signatures and contributions of these elements. We have characterized Starship diversity in a number of model fungi, where we have shown that they harbour important genes, such as those contributing to virulence in plant and human pathogens. We have two main areas where computational resources are required. The first is to compliment functional molecular biology work where we track Starship mobilization between different fungal species through laboratory assays and confirm transfer through whole genome sequencing. The second is to sequence new strains and explore their Starship repertoire. On this second initiative we currently have two projects, one on a genus of human fungal pathogen, Aspergillus, and the second on the plant pathogen Macrophomina phaesolina. Through a partnership with Akademiska sjukhuset, we have obtained 36 strains of Aspergillus from species that are not typically found in clinical settings. Our goal is to generate assemblies for these strains from short-read sequencing and characterize their Starships to determine what genes they carry and whether horizontal transfer has played a role in their adaptation to clinical environments. Macrophomina phaseolina is a fungal plant pathogen of critical interests for novel disease outbreaks and increased impact from climate change. This project aims to understand the genes that allow this fungus to infect different hosts. Additionally, we will investigate whether these virulence genes are being horizontally transferred to M. phaseolina on Starships, instigating novel outbreaks. We will complete this objective by sequencing the genomes of M. phaseolina isolated from an ongoing outbreak on sugar beet in Serbia, determine which genes are expressed during infection though RNAseq, and functionally validating candidates. We will sequence 20 strains with short-read sequencing, and a subset will be sequenced with long-reads.