Siobain Duffy

Siobain has an undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Rutgers University, where she has now returned as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources. Her graduate work on viral host-shifts as a model for testing theory on the evolution of generalism and specialism was conducted in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department at Yale University.  Her postdoctoral research, done in collaboration with Edward Holmes at the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Penn State University, concentrated on using phylogenetic methods to better understand the mechanisms that allow single-stranded DNA viruses to be emergent in novel hosts and environments.

Allison Hicks

Allison has a BS in Microbiology from Rutgers University. Allison is strongly interested in human pathogens. In addition to being laboratory manager, her research project focuses on how tissue tropism affects evolutionary dynamics of RNA viruses.

Eric Ho

Eric received his BSc and MSc in Computer Science from the National University of Singapore and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.  He was an IT guru in electronic trading and financial portal development before pursuing his doctoral degree in Biochemistry at Rutgers.  His dissertation used myriad bioinformatic and statistical techniques to study evoutionary pressure on, and cis-acting regulatory elements in, mammalian polyadenylation sites.  Currently, Eric is a a postdoctoral fellow of the INSPIRE program at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.  He has broad interests in computational biology, especially in motif finding algorithm design, machine learning, viral bioinformatics, RNA biology, comparative genome analysis, evolutionary theory, high throughput expression data analysis and educational technology.

Yee Mey Seah

Yee Mey has an undergraduate degree in Biotechnology from Penn State University and has worked as a medical technologist at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia. She is a third year PhD student in the Microbiology and Molecular Genetics program.  Her work focuses on molecular evolution of ssDNA viruses. She is also interested in viral biogeography, from epidemiology to patterns of genetic diversity on latitudinal gradients.

Daniel Cardinale

Dan has a BS in Biology from the College of New Jersey.  He is a third year PhD student in the Microbiology and Molecular Genetics program.  He is currently researching patterns of viral codon usage as a function of genomic architecture, and is interested in experimental evolution of phage phiX174. 

Preshita Gadkari

Preshita is a fourth year SEBS student, majoring in Biotechnology and Microbiology. She is interested in molecular approaches to understanding microbial ecology, and her projects focus on identifying phage and viruses in the bovine rumen. She is also president of Designer Genes, the Rutgers Biotech club.

Kate DeRosa

Kate is a third year SEBS student, majoring in Biology and Evolutionary Anthropology. She is currently researching the molecular evolution of Geminiviruses, relating coat protein codon usage to the codon usage of their hosts. She is also strongly interested in the molecular evolution of primates and biological anthropology.

...and maybe you?

We are interested in hearing from prospective applicants to the Ecology and Evolution graduate program, students already in Molecular Biosciences at Rutgers who want to rotate in our lab, from dedicated and responsible Rutgers undergraduates with an interest in bioinformatics, and from potential postdocs.  We are especially interested in working with prospective students and postdocs on fellowship applications. Read some of our work, and drop us a line.