RESEARCH

I am interested in
molecular evolution and phylogenetics,
which involves a combination of molecular biology, palaeontology, statistics,
and computer science. Most of my research falls under the broad category of
bioinformatics, but it also encompasses the more traditional fields of zoology
and palaeontology.
I am a
Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer in the
Evolutionary Phyloinformatics laboratory in the
Research School of Biology at the
Australian National University.
I am also a member of the
Centre for Macroevolution and Macroecology. My current research covers a
range of issues, including rates of molecular evolution, techniques for
calibrating rate estimates, and the factors that drive variation in molecular
evolutionary rates.
I will be moving to the School of Biological Sciences
at the University of Sydney
as a Senior Lecturer in April 2010.


I am a member of the
Australasian Evolution Society, the Genetics Society of Australasia, the Society
of Molecular Biology and Evolution, the Society of Systematic Biologists, and
The Australian Museum Society. I am serving on the editorial board of the
journal Mitochondrial DNA.
My CV can be downloaded as a PDF file
here.
PREVIOUS RESEARCH (OXFORD)
I was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Henry Wellcome Ancient Biomolecules
Centre and the
Evolutionary Biology Group, in the
Department of
Zoology, University of Oxford,
and an Associate Researcher at
Balliol College. My research dealt with molecular evolution in domesticated animals, with a
particular focus on cows and related species. My other research interests
included
relaxed-clock models implemented in a Bayesian framework, and accounting for
uncertainty in the fossil record in the estimation of the divergence dates of
different species.

I completed my D.Phil.
degree in mid-2006, which was supervised by Andrew Rambaut,
Alan Cooper, Alexei Drummond, and Richard Fortey. I was a member of
Linacre College throughout my doctorate.
My work concerned rates of evolution at the molecular level, which vary among different
sites in a gene, among different genes, and among different organisms. My thesis
dealt with various aspects of rate estimation, including the performance of
different methods to estimate rates and the divergence times among different
species, as well as the roles of adaptive and stochastic processes in driving
patterns of evolutionary rate variation.
This was the view from our
laboratory in the Department of Zoology:

PREVIOUS RESEARCH (sydney)

The
research conducted towards my Master's degree at the
University of Sydney
was supervised by Lars Jermiin (School
of Biological Sciences) and John Robinson (School
of Mathematics and Statistics). It was primarily concerned with the performance of phylogenetic
inference methods, the processes underlying
molecular evolution, and the consistency of molecular and palaeontological data.
My Master's thesis was published as a book, Confounding Factors in
Phylogenetic Analysis, by VDM Verlag in 2008.