People
The Bradburd Lab is recruiting! We are looking for graduate student for a fully funded 5-year PhD in the lab. More details here.
PI
Gideon Bradburd (he/him)
My research is focused around incorporating geography into statistical methods for studying population structure, admixture, demography, local adaptation, and natural selection in a variety of empirical systems.
More info: [CV], [Google Scholar], [github], [SSE profile of me].
Contact: bradburd (at) msu (dot) edu
twitter: (at) gbradburd
Office: 153 Giltner Hall, Michigan State University
My research is focused around incorporating geography into statistical methods for studying population structure, admixture, demography, local adaptation, and natural selection in a variety of empirical systems.
More info: [CV], [Google Scholar], [github], [SSE profile of me].
Contact: bradburd (at) msu (dot) edu
twitter: (at) gbradburd
Office: 153 Giltner Hall, Michigan State University
Postdocs
Rachel Toczydlowski (she/her) My research interests to date have centered on how plant populations respond to changing environmental conditions and selective pressures via phenotypic plasticity, evolution, and migration. I completed my PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in August 2019. For my dissertation, I combined classic field methods (e.g. common gardens) and nextgen sequencing to study population genetics, local adaptation, and inbreeding in Impatiens capensis. In the Bradburd Lab, I am tackling synthetic analyses of spatial population genetic data across geographic and macroevolutionary scales. I am also continuing collaborations with visual artists, social scientists, and foresters on a variety of ongoing research and outreach projects.
Matteo Tomasini (he/him) I have wide interests in population genetics, and I address them using mathematical, statistical and computational methods. In 2019 I finished my PhD at the University of Bern with Laurent Excoffier and Stephan Peischl, where I worked on mathematical models to study the impact of gene flow on evolutionary rescue. In the Bradburd Lab, I am trying to develop a method to infer patterns of isolation by distance using a biologically relevant model. I am also interested in various other topics, from human evolution to clustering methods to study population structure.
Bob Week (she/her/they/them) I am interested in the relationship between patterns and processes shaping ecological communities. This inquiry leads to a broad range of questions involving the role of contemporary coevolution, the structure of interaction networks, the effects of genetic architecture, the role of geography, feedbacks with abundance and ecosystem processes and the macroevolutionary history of interacting taxa. However, developing models and statistical methods to explore these areas and understand their relative contributions to the structure and dynamics of ecological communities leads to challenging technical problems. By combining tools from stochastic processes, theoretical quantitative genetics and population genetics with classical and Bayesian statistics, I collaborate with evolutionary biologists, ecologists and mathematicians to develop model-based approaches to infer ecological and evolutionary processes occurring in the wild.
Zach Hancock (he/him) [joining the lab Jan 2021] Evolutionary biologist with an interest in molecular evolution, phylogenetics, and spatial population genetics. Will complete my PhD in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Texas A&M University in October 2020, where I have combined empirical and simulation approaches to address the impacts of spatial structure on phylogenetic inference. In the Bradburd lab, I will be working to develop spatial genetic models that incorporate both isolation-by-distance and by-time with the goal to improve our ability to incorporate ancient samples alongside modern populations. In my free time I dabble in crustacean systematics, especially the evolution and biogeography of haustoriid amphipods.
Leonard Jones (he/him) [joining the lab Jan 2021] I will complete my PhD at the University of Washington in Fall 2020. My dissertation work centers the use of high throughput sequence data and coalescent methods to infer population level and phylogenetic histories in multiple snake systems. As a Bradburd lab member I'm looking forward to identifying how demography and processes like selection and introgression shape population structure across the genomes of different empirical systems.
PhD students
Meaghan Clark (she/her) I am a first year graduate student co-advised by Gideon Bradburd and Sarah Fitzpatrick. I completed a Master's degree with Jeanne Roberston at CSU Northridge. Research interests TBD!
Visiting scholars
Kirsty MacLeod (she/her) I am a behavioural and evolutionary ecologist with broad interests in maternal investment, reproductive systems, stress physiology, and sociality. I'm fascinated by how individuals interact with one another and their environment, how those interactions affect physiology and behaviour, and how this contributes to evolution and shapes vertebrate communities. My current and recent work investigates how physiological stress during gestation influences offspring morphology, behaviour, and survival. I am based at Lund University in Sweden, but when I'm passing through MSU, the Bradburd lab is my home away from home.
Other lab personnel
Abraham Oak Weber-Bradburd I am co-advised by Gideon Bradburd and Marjorie Weber. My research is focused on developing rudimentary motor control and (parental fingers desperately crossed) circadian sleep rhythms.
Eloise Wolf Weber-Bradburd I am co-advised by Gideon Bradburd and Marjorie Weber. My research is focused on developing new forms of dance, notions of personal property and, concurrently, the ability to share that property (work ongoing). Future research plans include sleeping in a little bit later on weekends.
Banjo woof!
GradBurds (Lab alumni)
Emily Puckett - now Assistant Professor at University of Tennessee, Memphis
Kelsey Yule - now Collections Manager at the NEON Biorepository collections at Arizona State
Kelsey Yule - now Collections Manager at the NEON Biorepository collections at Arizona State