Daven Presgraves, PI Daven received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Biology from the University of Maryland at College Park with Jerry Wilkinson and his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Rochester with Allen Orr. He was an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Munich with Wolfgang Stephan and an NIH-NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University with Andy Clark. Daven is now University Dean’s Professor at the University of Rochester. The Presgraves Lab, established in 2005, works on evolutionary genetics and genomics using Drosophila species as models with funding from the NIH, NSF, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the David & Lucile Packard Foundation species.
Emiliano Martí, PhD Student Emiliano got his masters at the Sao Paulo State University studying the evolution of repetitive DNA in Schistocerca grasshoppers. He is interested in male meiotic drive and its role in genome organization and sex chromosome evolution. He works currently works on the evolution of hybrid incompatibilities, sex-ratio meiotic drive, Segregation Distorter, and still finds time to contribute to our collaborative project, with Al Uy, on speciation and neo-sex chromosomes in Pacific Island birds. He is co-advised by Amanda Larracuente.
Christina Muirhead, Computational Biologist/Population Geneticist Christina (“Tee”) received her B.S. in Mathematics from Yale University and her Master’s from the University of Oregon, where she studied under Russ Lande. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied under Montgomery Slatkin. She then did a postdoc with John Wakeley at Harvard University. Tee is spearheads many of our comparative, functional and population genomics efforts focused on meiotic drive and sex chromosome evolution.
FORMER LAB MEMBERS
Beatriz Navarro Dominguez, Postdoc Beatriz received her B.S. in Biology and her PhD in Systems Biology from the Universidad de Granada in Spain. She did a brief postdoc with Nicole Valenzuela at Iowa State University, before signing on to with our lab and the Larracuente lab. Beatriz studied the population genomics of the selfish Segregation Distorter gene complex, a collaboration with Amanda Larracuente. She is now at the Universidad de Granada.
Thomas Rzatkiewicz, Drosophila Technician Thomas received his B.S. in Biology from the University of Rochester, and he’s now performing laborious experiments to determine the genetic basis of sex ratio distortion and hybrid male sterility on the X chromosome. Thomas is now attending Stony Brook Medical School.
Cara Brand, Graduate Student Cara received her B.S. in Biology from the University of Maryland, College Park, where she worked with Jerry Wilkinson. She then spent a year as research technician in Jerry Wilkinson’s lab, working on hybrid male sterility and meiotic drive in stalk-eyed flies. She studied the genetics and evolutionary history of the selfish Segregation Distorter system in D. melanogaster and the molecular genetic basis of evolved differences in the rate of recombination between Drosophila. She is now a Life Sciences Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow with Mia Levine at UPenn.
Zhenguo Zhang, Research Scientist Zhenguo received his B.S. from Nanjing University and his PhD from the Chinese Academy of Science, where he used computational approaches to study alternative splicing and nonsense-mediated mRNA decay. He then did a postdoc with Masotoshi Nei at Penn State, where he studied the molecular evolution of sex determination in Drosophila. He worked on computational analyses of the regulation of sex chromosomes in the Drosophila male gremlin. He is now a computational biologist at Zymo Research.
Emily Landeen, Graduate Student Emily received her B.S. from the University of Arizona, where she worked with Michael Nachman. During her PhD she studied the regulation of the X chromosome in the Drosophila male germline, and she worked to determine the molecular and evolutionary basis of the the special role played by the X chromosome in speciation between D. mauritiana and its sibling species. She is now a postdoctoral researcher in Doris Bachtrog‘s lab at the University of California at Berkeley.
Ben Goulet, Undergraduate Researcher Ben graduated with a B.S in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology with a Distinction in Research. He is a recipient of the Department’s 2014 Grace McCormack Award and he was the 2014 Biology Class Speaker. He worked on the genetic and molecular basis of a hybrid lethal incompatibility between Drosophila mauritiana and its two sister species. He is now PhD student with Robin Hopkins in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University.
Justin Roncaioli, Undergraduate Researcher Justin graduated with a B.S in Molecular Genetics (with minors in Chemistry and Psychology). He worked on genetic suppressors of the Segregation Distorter element in D. melanogaster. He now a PhD student in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California at Berkeley.
Victoria Cattani, Graduate Student Vicky received her Licenciatura in Ciencias Biológicas from the University of Buenos Aires and her M.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Rochester. She worked on the evolution and genetics of a lethal X-autosome hybrid incompatibility between D. mauritiana and its two sibling species, D. simulans and D. sechellia. She also studied the evolution of the genetic control of recombination rate differences between species of Drosophila. In 2012, Vicky completed her Ph.D. and moved on to a postdoc doing evolutionary genomics in C. elegans in Matt Rockman‘s lab at NYU.
Robert Edwards, Postdoc Robert (“Bort”) received his B.S. from the Australian National University in Canberra and his PhD from the University of Queensland, where he combined field and phylogenetics methods to study biogeography and speciation in the broad-leaved paper bark (Melaleuca leucadendra) species complex. While in the lab, Bort mapped X-linked regions from D. simulans that cause hybrid male sterility when introgressed into D. mauritiana. In 2016, he accepted a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution Herbarium at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC.
Amanda Larracuente, Postdoc Amanda received her B.S. in Biology from Canisius College in 2003 and her Ph.D. in Genetics from Cornell University, where she performed comparative analyses of the 12 Drosophila genomes, studied the factors affecting protein-coding sequence evolution, and investigated the genetics and evolution of the D. pseudoobscura neo-Y chromosome with Andy Clark. Amanda was a NIH-funded NRSA postdoctoral fellow working on the genetics, molecular biology and population genomics of the Segregation Distorter complex and studying the evolution and regulation of satellite DNAs in D. melanogaster. Amanda is now a faculty member in the University of Rochester’s Biology Department. Visit Amanda’s web site here.
Sarah Kingan, Postdoc Sarah received her B.S. in Biology from Brown University and her Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University where she studied the evolution and population genetic history of a cryptic sex ratio distorter system in the Drosophila simulans clade species with Dan Hartl. She worked on the genomics of complex speciation between D. simulans, D. mauritiana, and D. sechellia. Sarah is now a Bioinformatics Scientist at Pacific Biosciences.
Colin Meiklejohn, Postdoc Colin received his B.A. in Biology from the University of Chicago and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University where he studied the population genetics and transcriptional evolution of genes with male-biased expression in Drosophila with Dan Hartl. He was a NIH-NRSA postdoctoral researcher at Brown University where he worked on cytonuclear incompatibilities between closely related Drosophila species with David Rand. He studies the evolution and regulation of the X chromosome in the male germline and the evolution of gene interactions affecting gene expression in Drosophila (funded by a NSF grant to CDM). Colin is now a faculty member of the University of Nebraska’s School of Biological Sciences.
Pierre Gerard, Postdoc Pierre received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Genetics from the University of Paris VII and the University of Nancy, and his Ph.D. in forest genetics from ENGREF Paris. He worked on the genetics and evolution of embryonic lethality in D. simulans-D. melanogaster hybrids. Pierre is now a postdoc working on the genetics and evolution of sex ratio meiotic drive in Drosophila simulans at the CNRS/Université Paris-Sud XI with Catherine Montchamp-Moreau.