It's official! I'll be starting my lab at UF Department of Biology this January working on evolution of light-sensing systems and marine invertebrate biodiversity! 🪸🐙🦑🪱🐚🐌🦀

Interested in working on evo, devo, and/or neurophysio of opsin-expressing cells in Nematostella (and other squishy critters)?

I am looking for a postdoc this fall '25 and graduate students for '26 (apply by Dec. '25). If this is you please contact me even if uncertain, happy to start a convo!

I’m delighted to share that I will be starting my lab @univmiami.bsky.social in Spring 2025! We will study cellular and developmental biology in non-bilaterian animals – cnidarians, ctenophores, placozoans, and sponges – to explore early animal evolution.

In a species with a 30 gigabase genome (30 billion bases of DNA, 10x larger than the human genome!), chromosomes take on a whole new meaning and watching them divide is just spectacular. This spectacular division was captured from a culture of axolotl cells (a salamander)--starting in metaphase!

Our latest manuscript on comparative transcriptomics of torpor is out. In this we use an integrated analytic pipeline to identify evolutionarily conserved gene expression patterns in both heat and cold-induced torpor.
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...