Current Lab Members

Molly Przeworski

Professor

mp3284 at columbia.edu

Molly received a B.A. in Mathematics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago, working with Brian Charlesworth and Richard R. Hudson. Her postdoc was in the group of Peter Donnelly in the Statistics Dept. of the University of Oxford, and was followed by a two year stint as a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Before moving to Columbia University, she was a faculty member at the University of Chicago (where she was also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Early Career Scientist) as well as, briefly, at Brown University.

ab5230 at columbia.edu

Akanksha graduated with an Integrated BS-MS degree from IISER Thiruvananthapuram, where she majored in Biology with a Chemistry minor. During this time, Akanksha primarily worked on understanding the role of replication-transcription collisions in the evolution of genome organization and mutagenesis in bacteria. As a joint PhD student with Peter Andolatto, she hopes to use a mix of computational and experimental approaches to answer questions in evolutionary biology. Currently, she is working on experimental approaches to study recombination in non-model organisms.

vg2521 at columbia.edu

Vanesa completed her BS in Computer Science – Bioinformatics at Ramapo College of NJ. At Ramapo, she studied the association of cis-regulatory g-quadruplex motifs with splice sites in the human genome. During her undergrad, she also conducted computational biology research for the Genome Open-source Breeding Informatics Initiative and in Dr. Iman Hajirasouliha’s lab. She is a PhD student in the Biological Sciences program, interested in the application of statistical methods to the study of mutation.

crh2152 at columbia.edu

Carla studied Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, where she received her undergraduate and masters degrees (2017). She is a PhD student in the Biological Sciences doctoral program and was supported by an NSF pre-doctoral fellowship. Her research in the lab focuses on the evolution of recombination in vertebrates.

Sophie completed her BA at the University of Cambridge and is a current post-baccalaureate student at CUNY. She’s interested in learning more about human evolution, especially as it relates to preventative medicine, and she enjoys cycling around New York in her spare time.

ak4890 at columbia.edu

Arjun studied Computer Science with minors in Quantitative and Computational Biology and Linguistics at Princeton University as an undergraduate, after which he spent a year as a Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University. For his doctoral work, Arjun is working on the population genetics of corals.

md3914 at columbia.edu

Marc has an undergraduate degree in Human Biology, a M.S in Bioinformatics and recieved his PhD in Biomedicine at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. During his PhD, Marc studied introgression events between chimpanzees and bonobos, as well as genetic adaptations in the lineage of domestic dogs. His postdoctoral work aims to deepen our understanding of the mutation process in amniotes, and is funded by the Human Frontiers Science Program.

hmm2183 at columbia.edu

Hannah graduated from the University of Cambridge with a BA in Natural Sciences and an MSci in Systems Biology. During and after her master’s she worked on the evolutionary genomics of Lake Malawi cichlids in Richard Durbin’s group. She is a PhD student in the Biological Sciences doctoral program and is currently interested in the genetics of adaptation.

djp2179 at columbia.edu

Djivan obtained an M. S. in Ecology and Evolution and his PhD in evolutionary genomics at the Laboratoire de Biométrie et de Biologie Évolutive (LBBE), in Lyon. His PhD project focused on the evolution of sex chromosomes in plants using RNA-seq data. His research focuses on the determinants of meiotic recombination in vertebrates.

Postdoctoral Researcher

njs2195 at columbia.edu

Natanael graduated from École Normale Supérieure in Paris with a degree in Physics. During his PhD, he investigated the evolutionary forces that shape the diversity of immune repertoires. He is interested in modeling processes of germline and somatic mutation.

Postdoctoral Researcher

avs2172 at columbia.edu

Anastasia did her PhD research in Skoltech, Moscow under the supervision of Georgii Bazykin and Alexey Kondrashov. Her current research focuses on the role of genetic interactions and the interplay of selection with mutation and recombination processes in shaping patterns of species evolution and variation.

Research Scientist

mw2930 at columbia.edu

Minyoung obtained her PhD from the University of Toronto where she studied the evolution of sexual dimorphism. She is currently interested in the genesis of human germline mutation, most recently in the impact of transcription, and is funded off a RISE grant with Kristin Baldwin’s lab.