research
NYC became home in August 2001, as I enrolled in Columbia University E3B's Ecology & Evolutionary Biology PhD program. Until 2004, I was taking classes, TAing and doing research internships (rotations). Before crossing the Atlantic, I worked on loggerhead turtle population genetics in Eleftherios Zouros' lab at the Dept. of Biology, University of Crete, and on plant sexual trait evolutionary ecology under Jacqui Shykoff's supervision at Université Paris-Sud XI. Early on I was introduced to evolutionary biology through an internship in François Catzeflis' lab by Emmanuel Douzery (Inst. des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier) and classes taught by Isabelle Olivieri in Montpellier.
I work on forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis Matschie 1900) phylogeography and conservation genetics, the use of viruses and mobile elements in evolutionary biology, and wildlife pathogen evolution. As a EU Marie Curie fellow, I did some work on odorant binding protein gene evolution with Julio Rozas in Barcelona, whom with I collaborate now on evolutionary genomics projects.
At present I coordinate the AMNH's new DNA Barcoding Initiative for Conservation and work on pathogen molecular evolution, such as tuberculosis and retroviruses.
