I am currently a Bioinformatics Principal Investigator with the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC). My work focuses on microbial forensics, evolutionary genomics, and bioinformatic workflow development. I am also a part-time Professorial Lecturer in the Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Department in the George Washington University Milken Institute of Public Health.
Formerly, I was a Computational Biologist with the Bioinformatics and Computational Biosciences Branch (BCBB) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and was involved in teaching university courses in evolutionary genetics and bioinformatics through the NIAID African Centers of Excellence program. Prior to that, I was an NIH/NHGRI - Genome Sciences Training Program Postdoctoral Fellow and Michael Guyer Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison working with Prof. Carol Lee. I obtained a PhD in Biological Sciences from the George Washington University, Computational Biology Institute working with Prof. Keith Crandall.
Convergent and parallel evolution has long fascinated biologists, and is seen as some of the strongest evidence for the power of natural selection. Yet little attention has been paid to understanding mechanisms that could promote repeated evolution. Understanding the evolutionary genomic mechanisms underlying repeated evloution could enable effective prediction of evolution in the face of changing environments and ongoing disease outbreaks.
My research seeks to identify evolutionary genetic mechanisms promoting parallel and convergent evolution, applying comparative and population genomic tools. Examples include -
- Relaxed selection on gene expression underlying convergent vision loss in cave crayfishes
- Balancing selection promoting parallel adaptation to fresh water in invasive copepods
- Synergistic epistasis promoting parallel evolution in response to declining salinity
- Horizontal gene transfer underlying toxin production in divergent cyanobacteria lineages