Joining the Lab
- Undergrads / Grads / PostDocs
- Undergraduates excited about research and who have experience in evolutionary biology, molecular biology, or computational biology are encouraged to apply for a position in our lab. A minimum commitment of 10 hours per week during academic terms (for course credit) and full-time during summers (for pay), is expected. It is also expected that undergraduates will be willing to apply to the Vanderbilt Undergraduate Summer Research Program (for their summer stipends) and to complete their honors thesis in our lab. Candidates interested in joining our lab should email Antonis with a brief statement that explicitly states why they want to join our lab, CV and the contact details of two course instructors / evaluators.
- Candidate graduates interested in conducting their work in our lab are encouraged to apply either to the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program (IGP) or to the Biological Sciences Program (BSP). Students in the IGP rotate through 4 different labs in the first year, thus gaining a diversity of research experiences and evaluating the goodness-of-fit of several different labs. Students in the BSP rotate through 3 different labs but typically commit to joining a particular lab upon acceptance to the program. Candidates interested in joining our lab through either of these programs should email Antonis with a cover letter that explicitly states why they want to join our lab, statement of research interests, CV and the contact details of three evaluators.
- Talented and motivated postdoctoral candidates with relevant experience in evolutionary biology, molecular biology, computational biology, genomics, bioinformatics and related fields interested in joining our lab should email Antonis with a cover letter that explicitly states why they want to join our lab, statement of research interests, pdf reprints of published papers, CV and the contact details of three evaluators. A track record of high-quality publications, excellent communication skills, enthusiasm for basic research, and a collaborative approach to science is expected.
Useful Links
People: Antonis / John / Leonidas / Jason / Pad / Kris / Doug
Antonis Rokas
My interests are centered around two major areas of comparative biology; understanding the evolutionary relationships among living organisms, and elucidating the molecular origins and evolution of genetic pathways and morphological traits.
John G. Gibbons
John is a graduate student in the Department of Biological Sciences. He joined our lab in August 2007 and he is working on the evolution and function of repeat-containing genes in Aspergillus fungi.
Leonidas Salichos
Leonidas joined our lab in August 2008 as a graduate student in the Department of Biological Sciences. Leonidas comes fresh from a M.Sc. in Bioinformatics from K. U. Leuven, Belgium. His work here is focused on yeast and metazoan phylogenetics.
Jason C. Slot
Jason joined our lab in September 2008, after completing his Ph.D. in David Hibbett's lab at Clark University. Here at Vanderbilt, Jason succeeded in getting funded by a very prestigious National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics for work toward on elucidating the birth, evolution, and death of metabolic gene clusters in fungi.
Padmanabhan Mahadevan
Pad joined our lab in January 2009, after completing his Ph.D. in Donald Seto's lab at George Mason University. Here at Vanderbilt, Pad is comparing a variety of animal genomes to gain a better understanding of the molecular foundations of animal multicellularity and development. Along the way, he is also developing tools that will allow researchers to better analyze the evolution of functional domains.
Kriston L. McGary
Kris joined our lab in June 2009, after completing his Ph.D. in Edward Marcotte's lab at University of Texas-Austin, where he was NSF IGERT in computational phylogenetics Fellow. Here at Vanderbilt, Kris is interested in continuing to pursue his long-time reasearch interest on how organisms' adaptation to biological functions is shaping the evolution of biological networks and proteins, and its implications for understanding development and disease.
Douglas A. Denniston
Doug is a upcoming Vanderbilt junior, who joined our lab in January 2009. Doug is currently developing software that will enable the identification of microsatellites from the intergenic and intronic regions of fungal genomes. In collaboration with John, Doug is applying those tools to comparing rates of microsatellite conservation and divergence in a variety of human pathogenic fungi.