CHES Faculty Member
- Siobain Duffy
- Professor, Chair of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources
- Focus Area: Evolutionary and Modern Human Genetics
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- ACADEMIC BIOGRAPHY:
Siobain Duffy has been in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Natural Resources in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences since 2009. Rutgers is her alma mater: she majored in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and conducted years of undergraduate microbiology research in the Food Science department. Her PhD research at Yale University used experimental evolution to model RNA viral emergence on novel hosts, and her postdoctoral research at Penn State University centered on bioinformatic analysis of DNA viral evolution.
- CURRENT PROJECTS:
The evolutionary genetics of constraint and evolvability in an RNA bacteriophage
Evolution of cassava-infecting viruses in Eastern and Central Africa
- RESEARCH INTERESTS:
The Duffy lab focuses on fast-evolving viruses (those with RNA and single-stranded DNA genomes). We are interested in how various viruses create and maintain the genetic variation they need to emerge in novel hosts, how epistasis affects evolutionary trajectories and improving how viral evolution is modeled, especially for public health applications.