vonHoldt Lab

Stephen Gaughran
I am interested in understanding fundamental aspects of molecular evolution by studying natural populations. My main focus is how evolutionary processes play out in small and bottlenecked populations. In my PhD dissertation research, I studied how naturally small populations avoid mutational meltdowns and how population size correlates with the distribution of fitness effects of new mutations. As a post-doc in the vonHoldt and Graham labs, I am studying how genetic and epigenetic diversity in northern elephant seals correspond to their immunological response to lungworm infections. I am also working as an NSF postdoctoral, in collaboration with the Michael McGowen at the National Museum of Natural History to study the genomic consequences of an extreme population bottleneck in northern elephant seals. For this project, I am generating genome sequence data from seal specimens collected before and after the bottleneck, and creating a machine learning method to detect signals of natural selection in these temporally sampled genomes.

Dhriti Tandon
I am a fifth year graduate student and am broadly interested in understanding genetic basis of complex and variable phenotypes such as behavior. I am especially intrigued by behaviors of evolutionary significance in animals, including sociability and mating behaviors.

Stavi Tennanbaum
I am a second year PhD student interested in genomic evolution in wild populations. I previously worked on several field-based research projects on the evolutionary and behavioral ecology of small subarctic mammals, where I became specifically intrigued by adaptation within high alpine environments. For my dissertation research, I will be studying differential DNA methylation as a molecular marker of biological aging and investigating how gene regulation mechanisms influence life history strategy. I am primarily focused on elucidating how epigenetic modifications increase fitness in naturally fluctuating and harsh habitats and how such modifications are successfully inherited.