I'm a Newton International Fellow working at the University of Edinburgh with Andrew Rambaut. I'm currently focusing on the antigenic evolution of the influenza virus, with the goal of integrating antigenic and genetic data into phylogenetic models. It is my hope that these sorts of models will provide predictive power in choosing vaccine strains.

I spent 2008 to 2011 employed by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute doing research in the lab of Mercedes Pascual at the University of Michigan. Here, I started my study of the evolutionary and epidemiological dynamics of the influenza virus. Learning epidemiology/ecology was a welcome addition to my population genetic background. Here, rather than just assuming some (rather arbitrary) fitness effect, mutations require a more mechanistic explanation, e.g. how they effect tranmission rates, rates of recovery from infection and cross-immunity between strains.

I spent the summer of 2008 working for WRI on various biological aspects of Wolfram|Alpha. See for example: "human lion black bear", "heart disease 30 yo male smoker", "blood pressure 120/80".

I received my Ph.D. in evolutionary genetics from Harvard University under the able supervision of Dan Hartl. My thesis work focused on testing "evolutionary molecular clocks." Does evolutionary change in protein sequences and gene expression levels occur at a steady rate, or are there frequent discontinuities?

I did my undergraduate work at the University of Chicago. My honor's thesis involved killing thousands of Drosophila to force them to evolve.

A full CV is also available.