I obtained my PhD in October of 2020 from Lincoln University in New Zealand. In December of 2020 I joined the Molecular Palaeopathology group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, where we worked on ancient DNA, DNA molecules extracted from archeological remains. These molecules tend to be fragmented and have high amounts of deaminated cytosines, creating some computational challenges. This work has resulted in some exciting findings regarding several human pathogens such as the Treponema pallidum and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. I’ve also developed a new tool called DamageMasker that “masks” deaminated cytosines from mapping data, so as to reduce the overal noise that damage adds to genotyping data.

I have spend the majority of his life working on foundational evolutionary questions. I worked with plant, mammal and microbial systems both in a molecular lab and computationally. My primary interest are to understand evolutionary drivers, both internal and external (parasites, global warming, habitat loss) and how they create loss and gain of speciation.