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I began my undergraduate degree studying Biological Sciences at Middlesex University, a result of my admiration towards the research and the discoveries in the field, famously made in the years prior. During my time there I developed a deeper inclination towards working in research, leading me to starting an MSc in Biotechnology at Nottingham Trent University. There, I conducted my thesis investigating RNA editing events in human brain tissue. Aiming to elucidate the function and effects of these lesser understood posttranscriptional genetic events.

This enthusiasm steered me towards a PhD position in Dr Kofler’s group at the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics. Here, my work will be focused on looking at the potential fitness impacts and effects of specific transposable elements on different Drosophila populations.

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I have always been fascinated by nature's impressive biodiversity and curious about how it has emerged. This led me to do my studies in biology. For my master, I specialized in ecology since I wanted to understand the complex interactions between the different components of nature. It soon became clear that my interest in evolutionary biology was strongest. Therefore, I focused on the population genomics of speciation in two recently diverged Chinese Populus species for my master’s project, performing genome scans for reproductive isolation, as well as demographic inferences.

For my PhD, I'm working on Aquilegia, a genus of beautiful flowering plants within the family Ranunculaceae. This genus has experienced adaptive radiations in Eurasia as well as North America and consists of about 70 species which are widely interfertile (especially within geographic regions). Interestingly, one of the seven Aquilegia chromosomes, chromosome 4, seems to differ in its evolutionary history from the rest of the genome, since its phylogenetic history is systematically different, and its levels of polymorphism are much higher.

Currently, I’m analyzing the relationships of European Aquilegia species using population-scale genomic data, and I’m working on generating the first European Aquilegia reference genome. In the longer term, I plan to try to pinpoint the evolutionary origin of the aberrant chromosome 4 by looking at the homologue in other genera which are closely related to Aquilegia. Another objective of mine is to analyze the factors playing a role in the European Aquilegia radiation, with a special focus of hybridization.

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My fascination with the living world dates back to the school days where I saw a whole new world under the microscope, which then became my motivation to pursue this enigmatic field of science called biology. It was only natural for me to have taken forward this admiration of mine, by graduating with a degree in Botany Honors from WBSU, India. During my   bachelor’s I was deeply intrigued by the molecular biology of different genes that work  together to maintain the functionality of an organism. I soon realized that science has  evolved so majestically that the barriers between different branches of science are gradually  fading, promoting a lot of interdisciplinary work thus achieving a greater goal. While updating  myself with going on current research I realized that Bioinformatics allow scientists to study life processes at the smallest and most intricate levels.

My master’s in bioinformatics at Pondicherry University, India gave me a better view of how this interdisciplinary concoction works. I worked as a summer intern at Indian Statistical Institute and got an opportunity to co-author a paper- “Lowest copy nuclear genes in disentangling plant  molecular systematics”. With my new-found interest in phylogenetic analysis, I did my master’s thesis work on performing phylogenetic analysis of HPV involved in cutaneous and genital warts. After finishing my master’s I worked as a research assistant in an evolutionary immunology lab at Ashoka University, India. There I worked to analyze the molecular underpinnings of adaptation against various stress factors like infection, irradiation, and disease under variable environmental conditions such as malnutrition, climate warming, and the high frequency of multiple infections using transcriptomics in Tribolium castaneum and Drosophila melanogaster.

All this stirred my enthusiasm and passion towards evolutionary biology, so I joined as a PhD student in Prof. Christian Schlötterer’s group at the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics. Here, my work will be focused on understanding mutation order speciation and the molecular underpinnings leading to reproductive isolation that is causing this type of speciation.

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I started my undegraduate studies with a Bachelor’s in Mathematics and in Computer Science. During my last year I had the chance to work on some biological data which introduced me to Bioinformatics and Biology as a whole. I obtained a master’s degree in Bioinformatics from Sorbonne-Universite, and during my internship I developed a real taste for research in the field of epigenetics, as I dived deep into the mechanisms underlying epigenetic regulation in Arabidopsis thaliana.

I am currently a PhD candidate as part of the Nordborg group at GMI where I try to understand the role of DNA methylation in adaptation, still working with that same model organism.

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After one course in genetics during my sophomore year, my passion for Biology was recommenced after nearly being lost due to heavily memorization-oriented zoology and botany courses. I’ve realized how lucky I am to find genetics as logical, quantitative, and that it has laws to follow. Hence I decided to dedicate my career to this field.

I obtained my Bachelor's degree in Biotechnology at Sun Yat-Sen University, China, with my thesis project aiming at improving the GWAS results of Major Depression Disorder in humans via empowering pleiotropic genetic markers, which also contributed to one bigger project of the lab assessing the total genetic contribution of each genetic variant across a wide range of phenotypes, lately published in Nature Communications.

In order to improve my knowledge and skills about genomic analysis, I further continued a Master's degree in Bioinformatics at Uppsala University, Sweden. For my thesis study, I conducted QTL analyses of multiple traits in a body-weight-selected chicken intercross line, and it was during that process, I found my particular interest and passion in evolutionary genetics. Therefore, I joined the program at the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics to pursue a Ph.D. degree in evolutionary genetics.

During my Ph.D. studies, I will contribute to the work in temperature adaptation of Drosophila simulans. The genomic signatures were previously studied after the fruit flies are adapted to a cold or a hot environment respectively, while my project aims to reveal what will happen if the selection pressure is reversed, i.e., changing the cold-adapted flies to a hot environment. It is anticipated that we can rule out lab adaptation better and improve the efficiency of selection providing higher allele frequency of potentially selected alleles after the first stage of selection with this particular study design.

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I obtained my Bachelor's degree in Biology and a Master's in Bioinformatics and
Computational Biology at Porto University, Portugal. During my Master's thesis, I developed
methods to quantify the degree of phylogenetic signal while accounting for tree uncertainty. I
focused on categorical traits for which fewer methods exist. My Master's thesis sparked my
interest in developing computational methods to uncover biological signatures of adaptation
from genomic data, leading me to an internship at the Institute of Population Genetics.

Currently, I am applying Machine Learning techniques to analyze time series data of allele
frequency changes in fruit flies that have been experimentally evolved for hundreds of
generations. The primary objective is to detect the number of selection targets and their
selection coefficients as a way to characterize the complex adaptive architecture of
temperature adaptation. Additionally, I am implementing Machine Learning techniques to
accelerate Bayesian phylogenetic inference, which will permit the scaling up of parameter
estimation in complex evolutionary scenarios, such as the evolution of coding sequences.

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I obtained my bachelor’s degree in Genetics and my master’s degree in Bioinformatics from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. During my master's studies, I focused on human population genetics. My thesis centered on unraveling the genetic origins of Mercheros, a Spanish ethnic minority. Before finishing my master’s, I joined Summer of High-Performance Computing 2020 hosted by the PRACE.

During my PhD at PopGen Vienna, I will be working on understanding polygenic adaptation. My main goal is to explore what happens once populations adapt to a new environment, aiming to understand which genetic forces shape the genome once trait optimum is reached. To do so, I will be working with Drosophila simulans populations that have been under selective pressure for more than 200 generations.

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As I grew up in a small village in the mountains of Lebanon, I was always amazed by the area’s diversity and how every species has adapted to its environment. This fueled my curiosity to study biology and adaptation. Before learning about the theory of evolution, it was all unexplainable to me. Thus, I decided to study biology at the Lebanese University. I then pursued a Master's degree in plant protection at the Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences, with my thesis focusing on unveiling the genetic background of resistance against the PVY virus in a specific potato cultivar.

However, my studies drew my attention to more sophisticated unanswered questions, such as what are the forces creating the enormous complexities at the genomic and phenotypic levels of different organisms. My passion for more theoretical, challenging, and evolutionary biology-focused studies led me to apply to the PhD program at the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics.

Currently, I have joined the group of Robert Kofler, and during my PhD, we will conduct experimental evolution studies to understand the genetic and adaptive architecture of body size variation under truncating selection in Drosophila simulans.

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I completed my undergraduate studies in marine biology and later pursued a master's degree in marine environment and resources (MER+) through the Erasmus Mundus program in four European universities. For my master's thesis, I worked on the evolution of sex-associated genomic variation of Littorina saxatilis (rough periwinkle) at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Following this, I joined the Barton group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) as a scientific intern, continuing my MSc thesis project. Since September 2023, I joined the Plant Ecological Genomics group (Dr Ovidiu Paun) at the University of Vienna to do my PhD on the role of structural variation in the adaptive radiation of the persimmon tree (Diospyros) in the New Caledonia archipelago.
 

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During my bachelor’s studies in Biotechnology at Universidad de Zaragoza I developed a particular interest in the ecological aspects of microbial diversity. For this reason, in my bachelor thesis I aimed to understand why two soil microbial communities had a different growth promotion effect on the legume species Lotus japonicus and Lotus burttii. After my bachelor, I moved to Vienna to study Microbial Ecology at Univ. of Vienna, where I prioritised my formation in bioinformatics and metagenomics. For my master thesis I looked at the differences between microbial communities sampled from hyper-saline and from arid environments. I used a combined approach of comparative metagenomics and fluorescent microscopy to study how closely related bacteria had evolved to cope with different extreme conditions.

During my PhD at PopGen Vienna, I will look at the evolutionary dynamics of the Drosophila gut microbiome. I will leverage D. simulans populations evolved artificially in two temperature regimes to study how gut-associated bacteria adapt to the host’s temperature.

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I’m a Ph.D. based at Gregor Mendel Institute (GMI). My main interest is the genome organization of one of the model plants - Arabidopsis thaliana. During my Ph.D., I’m working on two projects studying this question from different points of view.

In one of my projects, I’m aiming to explain an unusual polymorphism pattern that occurs in Arabidopsis thaliana pericentromeric regions. This pattern is unusual because the number of the plant's polymorphism is lower near pericentromeric areas and bigger in the chromosomal arms which are explained usually by the highest crossover rates in arms. There are plenty of questions in this project that I am fascinated by: is this pattern specific only to A. thaliana? What causes this pattern to appear in Arabidopsis or near-on kin genomes? Are genes inside patterns of increased polymorphism contributing to a special functional category?

In my second project, I’m investigating a more narrow question dedicated to identifying regulators of the DECREASE IN DNA METHYLATION 1 (DDM1) pathway in A. thaliana. This pathway plays a central role in transposable elements (TEs) silencing in Arabidopsis by interaction with plant-specific histone H2A (H2A.W) which brings special nucleosome properties and silences TEs with the H3K9me1/2 histone variant. The aim of this project is to identify molecular regulators of the DDM1 pathway using a progeny with a portion of resilience TEs obtained from crosses between natural accessions and DDM1 mutants.

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My interest in Evolution has been a constant in my life ever since I learned about it. Due to this interest, I got selected for the KVPY scholarship using which I enrolled for my undergraduate studies at IISER Mohali, India. During the five years of my studies, I was exposed to the major basic sciences through theoretical and practical courses. My MS thesis project focused on the dynamics of coinfection of pathogens in baseline D. melanogaster population. I graduated with an integrated BS/MS degree with a major in Biology.  

My enthusiasm for Evolution and Genetics only increased through these years, encouraging me to pursue a PhD in the same. At Prof. Schlötterer’s lab, I will be studying adaptation to density-dependant selection using experimental evolution in D. simulans populations. By conducting evolve and re-sequence, and DNA and RNA sequencing on these evolved populations, we hope to identify the loci which are adapting due to this selection pressure, and also their molecular and biological functions, thus helping to identify their phenotypic targets.

The interdisciplinary research conducted at the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics provides the perfect foundation for me to acquire new skills and gain more knowledge.

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The past has always intrigued me. It started out with an affinity for History and as my education progressed, spread out to other fields like Archaeology, Linguistics, and Evolutionary Biology. The latter ultimately became my field of choice as I had in the meantime, independently developed a keen interest for Biology too. My 5-yr integrated master’s program in Systems Biology provided me with a broad base in Biology and introduced me to the cusp where it meets the other natural sciences.

Currently I am investigating the drivers of an adaptive radiation of persimmons on New Caledonia, a biodiversity hotspot. The species in this radiation occupy distinct niches, in particular with regard to differing edaphic and weather conditions. It is fascinating that a small founder population has given rise to such rich diversity over a comparatively short period of time. I intend to look into this very aspect with special focus on testing the hypothesis that adaptive genome evolution can be a by-product of structural variation and transposable element dynamics.

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During my undergraduate studies at the University of Crete in Greece, I specialised in Environmental Biology and the management of natural resources. I completed my thesis on paralogous gene evolution and expression and I continued on an internship at University College London, where I dove into learning how to use bioinformatics skills to study substitution models in deep phylogenies. This internship sparked my interest in developing more computational skills to handle evolutionary questions and led me to obtain an MRES degree on “Computational methods in ecology and evolution” at Imperial College London. My master’s thesis focused on developing a deep learning algorithm to distinguish between hard and soft selective sweeps from low coverage sequencing data of non-model organisms.

During my PhD project, I will be expanding on polymorphism-aware phylogenetic models (PoMos) by introducing PoMo-cod, a codon substitution model for detecting signatures of natural selection on protein-coding genes. PoMo-cod will allow to disentangle the effects of natural selection from known confounding forces (such as mutational biases, demography and GC-biased gene conversion) in determining the genetic diversity of multiple populations and species, thus producing more accurate genome-wide maps of diversifying evolving genes.

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I've always been fascinated by nature and evolution. I decided to study Biotechnology at the University of Insubria, in Italy, and after my bachelor I subsequently started my master in Molecular Biotechnology. While studying for my master's degree, and especially during my Erasmus traineeship in Wädenswil (CH), I developed the idea of starting a PhD. Also, I realized that what I'm most passionate about is not applied biology, but instead to try to understand mechanisms of biological evolution.

That's why I applied for this project in Robert Kofler's group. I will work on transposable elements, trying to understand their abundance in different human populations, both extant and extint, working with modern and ancient DNA data, and eventually look for biological and historical explanations of the results.

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I enrolled in the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Zagreb for the love of natural sciences. The field of Agricultural Economics seemed ideal for me and in 2017, I was awarded with a Bachelor´s degree. Throughout my undergraduate studies I got more and more interested in genetics so I decided to shift toward Animal Genetics and Breeding. I made my diploma with highest honors and defended my master thesis entitled “Variability analysis of the whole goat mitogenoma" in 2019. For my thesis, I retrieved a large number of complete goat mitogenomes from the whole-genome data stored in public depositories and analysed their variability, in addition to performing phylogenetics.

Curiosity, previous experience and economical background helped shape my research interests, particularly in the field of population genetics. I am very happy that I joined the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics and that I have an opportunity to broaden my knowledge.

In my PhD project, I will focus on the dynamic but still enigmatic Y chromosome. Several features make Y chromosome interesting: strictly male-limited transmission, absence of recombination, degeneration of Y-linked genes during evolution and accumulation of genes responsible for maleness and reproduction. Therefore, my project aims to better understand the evolutionary dynamics of mammalian Y chromosomes by studying several species groups with similar divergence as humans and apes (2-20 mya). I will infer lineage-specific as well as shared evolutionary constraints of the Y chromosomal genes and will study the extent to which different types of selection act to maintain genes within this unique genomic environment.

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Ever since I graduated in biology, my academic career has been motivated by an interest in understanding how evolutionary change occurs. As a result, I took a master's degree in genetics at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona and subsequently discovered the potential of Drosophila as a model system in evolutionary biology during my time as an intern at the University of Liverpool. This led me to become a lab technician at PopGen for a year and a half, where I have been involved in an exciting project in Neda Barghi's group on the adaptation of experimentally evolving populations of Drosophila.

I am happy to continue in the same project at PopGen. As a PhD student, I will study polygenic adaptation by investigating what are the genomic and phenotypic changes in populations of Drosophila following a change in the optimal trait. To do this, we are evolving populations of small and large sizes and collecting time series sequencing data.

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During my Bachelor's degree in biotechnology at the University of Padova, I was fascinated by genetics and virology. This led me to continue my studies with a Master's degree in Medical biotechnologies. My thesis was focused on third generation lentiviral vectors for the delivery of a Cas9-gRNAs construct to target the proviral DNA of HIV-1. This work allowed me to better understand retroviruses and gain vital experience in a laboratory setting.

I am conducting my PhD in Kofler's group and I will focus on the invasion dynamics of transposable elements. I will perform in vivo experiments obtaining data from novel invasions in Drosophila populations and in silico by designing and running simulations. I aim to improve our overall understanding of transposable element's evolution and their interaction with host defence mechanisms, in particular piRNAs.

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Before and during my graduate studies at the University of Iceland I became exceptionally fascinated by intra and inter specific biodiversity, and the genetic, developmental and evolutionary processes that generate this diversity. I carried out a research project during my graduate studies where I investigated tissue-specific gene expression in a wild fruit fly population and the expressional responses to an artificially selection against a phenotype caused by an experimentally introgressed mutation. Interested in the genetic origin of gene regulatory difference, I analysed the genomes of these strains in continuation of my Master’s research after graduation. In parallel, I studied the role of miRNAs in the context of speciation as I am also interested in the whole picture of gene regulation. My interest in evolution, diversity, and the genotype-to-phenotype map led me to work as a technician on another project, studying the link between plasticity and divergence in more and less specialized ecotypes.

These interests urged me to pursue a Ph.D. in evolutionary genetics, where I seek to become a contributing and independent scientist in the field. I believe the program at the Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics provides an excellent opportunity for me to achieve my goals. During my Ph.D. at the Schlötterer lab, I aim to assess the causes of different selection responses. Previous studies (Barghi et al., 2019; Mallard et al., 2018) demonstrated population specific selection responses to high temperature between two D. simulans populations, despite similar phenotypic selection response. The main aim is to better understand what determines a few parallel pronounced selection targets in one population and redundant multiple less pronounced selection targets in the other. This study will improve our understanding and prediction about if and how populations may adapt to changing environments, and be applied in climate change.

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