Personal Statement
I am an evolutionary biologist interested in how microbial interactions evolve, especially in response to environmental change. I use techniques such as experimental evolution to understand the ecology and evolution of soil bacteria. In the past I have studied microbial food webs and the evolution of predatory bacteria. My research themes include the role of biotic selective pressures in organismal evolution, social behaviors as anti-predator defense, and the evolution of cooperation and cheating in natural populations. During my PhD at the ETH Zurich, I developed a novel model food web based on the social and predatory bacterium Myxococcus xanthus, using the nematode Pristionchus pacificus as an apex predator. At the University of Liverpool, I am studying how environmenal changes impact interactions and patterns of horizontal gene transfer within a bacterial community. I work with Dr James Hall. Together with our collaborators, we consider bacterial communities as complex systems and seek to understand them as such, using a combination of modeling and wet lab approaches. #fixedterm