My pronouns are he/him
Origin and evolution of prokaryotic life is still not well known. I use bacterial genomes as 'genomic fossils' to investigate the history of life and the evolution of antibiotic resistance. I work at the intersection of deep time evolutionary biology, microbial genomics, and bioinformatics. My research spans radically different timescales, from reconstructing how ribosomal proteins evolved in response to changes in Earth’s ancient geochemistry around 3 Billion years ago, to identifying genetic variants associated with contemporary antimicrobial resistance. I combine large-scale comparative genomics with phylogenomics, machine learning, molecular dating, Bayesian inference, and genome-wide association studies.
My current work uses ribosomal protein paralogs as “genomic fossils” to investigate early bacterial evolution and explores patterns of horizontal gene transfer during major transitions in Earth’s history. In parallel, using similar methodologies, I study low-level antibiotic resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, including genetic variation beyond established resistance markers. More broadly, I am interested in using computational methods and machine learning to connect microbial genome evolution with environmental change, disease, and the history of life on Earth.
