I am an evolutionary geneticist working as an Assistant Professor of Biology in the Center for Biological Data Science at Virginia Commonwealth University.
I study the genetics of adaptation with a focus on the mechanisms by which epistasis, pleiotropy, and the underlying distribution of fitness effects (DFE) determine the properties of adaptive walks. My work utilizes a combination of wet-lab and computational approaches. In the lab, I experimentally evolve microvirid bacteriophages to explore the properties and limits of adaptation. I also work toward the development of new population genetic methods that are applicable to viruses and other organisms with highly skewed offspring distributions, for the purpose of analyzing population genomic data from experimentally evolved populations.
The Genetics of Adaptation in Viruses 