Ph.D., Stanford University, 2010
BA, Harvard University, 2005

Associated Faculty in Biology.  Main appointment in Department of Physics.

We want to be able to predict how populations will evolve. (For example, when a new antibiotic is developed, we would like to know whether bacteria will become resistant in weeks, decades, or somewhere in between.) This goal is just starting to become realistic, thanks to rapidly advancing genetic sequencing technology. Now we need to solve a pair of theoretical problems in order to translate all the new sequence data into evolutionary predictions. First, we need to understand how to infer prevailing population dynamics from population genomic data. Second, given these patterns, we need to calculate the spectrum of possible evolutionary trajectories. Within these broad areas, our research is focused on how functional and statistical interactions among genes affect evolution, the role of spatial structure, and inferring the dynamics of microbial populations.