Team

Michael D. Martin

Project manager, Professor

Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

Mike earned his PhD from the Johns Hopkins University (USA) in 2011, having then moved to the University of Copenhagen (Denmark, 2011-2014) as a postdoctoral reseacher. From 2014-2016 he was a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley (USA), and since 2016 he is a professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, where he leads the Holomuseomics research group.

Research in Mike’s lab involves analyzing genome sequences in order to reconstruct and interpret the evolutionary histories of plants, animals, and their pathogens. He is particularly attracted to cases in which ancient/degraded DNA derived from natural history collections allows us to explain present-day distributions of biodiversity by looking directly into the past.

José Cerca

Project postdoctoral researcher

Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

José earned his PhD in Evolutionary Genomics from the University of Oslo in 2020. He was a postdoctoral scholar in UC Berkeley (USA) with Professor Rosemary Gillespie where he worked on the adaptive radiation of Hawaiian Tetragnatha spiders.

He is fascinated by how species evolve in Islands, and particularly by the processes of adaptived radiation, repeated evolution, parallel and convergent evolution. To do so, he combines genomic data (population genomics, phylogenomics, comparative genomics) and bioinformatic methods together with ecological and phenotypic data.

personal page: jcerca.github.io

Vanessa Bieker

Project postdoctoral researcher

Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

Vanessa earned her PhD from the Norwegian University Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 2021. She completed her thesis using the Ragweed model system using a combination of modern and ancient samples, and explored plant symbionts using metagenomic shotgun sequencing, invasiveness using population genetics and phylogenomics.

She is an expert in low coverage re-sequencing data analysis, bioinformatics, molecular laboratory methods and herbarium material.

Patricia Jaramillo

Project collaborator, Senior Researcher

Charles Darwin Foundation, Galápagos, Equador

Patricia is an Ecuadorian researcher who came to Galapagos in 1996 to work on her PhD thesis focusing on anthropogenic impact native, endemic and introduced plant species in the Galapagos Islands.

She has been connected to the Charles Darwin Research Station since 1998. Currently, she is a Senior Researcher and leader of the “Galapagos Verde 2050: Restoration of Degraded Ecosystems and Sustainable Agricultural Practices” project.

Lene Rostgaard Nielsen

Project collaborator, Associate Professor

University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Lene has earned her PhD in 2002 working on Scalesia. She has a background in population genetics and, since 2006, she has focused on genetic aspects of emerging infectious diseases on their host tree species (Fraxinus and Ulmus). The research is experimentally based and molecular markers are used to evaluate ecological and evolutionary hypotheses.

Loren Rieseberg

Project collaborator, Full Distinguished Professor

University of British Columbia, Canada

Loren earned his PhD from Washington State University in 1987. His lab employs population genomic approaches, computational methods, and field and greenhouse studies to study plant adaptation and speciation. This involves understanding how gene flow, both within and between species, influences these processes; factors that affect rates of gene flow, including reproductive barriers such as niche differentiation, phenological isolation, and pollen competition, as well as chromosomal inversions that impede gene flow mainly by suppressing recombination.

Neelima R. Sinha

Project collaborator, Professor

University of California at Davis, USA

Neelima earned her PhD at UC Berkeley in 1990 and has worked as an Assistant and Associate Professor in UC Davis between 1995 and 2002. Since 2002 she has been a Professor in Plant Biology. Her laboratory focuses on the fundamental mechanisms of leaf development, using model organisms such as Arabidopsis, tomato, maize, Welwitschia mirabilis, ferns, cycads and basal and derived Angiosperms.

Rasmus Nielsen

Project collaborator, Professor

University of California at Berkeley, USA

Rasmus received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1998, did his postdoctoral research at Harvard University, followed by a period as an assistant professor at Cornell University from 2000-2004. From 2004 he has been a Professor of Biology at the University of Copenhagen and he joined the faculty at the departments of Integrative Biology and Statistics at Berkeley in 2008.
He works mostly on statistical and population genetic analyses of genomic data, in particular methods for detecting natural selection, describing population genetic variation, inferring demography, and methods for association mapping.

Tom Gilbert

Project collaborator, Professor

University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Tom earned his PhD from the University of Oxford in 2004, and moved to the University of Arizona between 2003-05 to do a Postdoctoral stay. He was a Marie Curie fellow between 2005-07 and was appointed in 2008 as an Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen. Since 2011 he has been a Professor of Palaeogenomics.

He is the director of the Danish National Research Foundation Center for Evolutionary Hologenomics and the leader of the Hologenomics group at the GLOBE Institute. The Center and his wider Group study life through the hologenomic window – that is embracing the concept that it is impossible to understand the genetic basis of life without viewing it as the union of hosts and their microbiomes.

Gitte Petersen

Project collaborator, Associate Professor

University of Stockholm, Sweden

Gitte earned her PhD in 1990 from the University of Copenhagen, where she became an assistant professor in 1998. In 2018 she moved to Sweden where she is now an Associate Professor at the University of Stockholm.
In her research, Gitte focuses on phylogeny and molecular evolution, especially on parasitic plants.

Ole Seberg

Project collaborator, Professor

University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Ole earned his PhD in 1985 from the University of Copenhagen. In 1992 he became n associate professor. He currently leads the Botanical Garden of the Natural History Museum of Denmark.
His research focuses on molecular and genome evolution, and systematics of various plant groups.

Bent Petersen

Project collaborator, Associate Professor

University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Bent has a background in Biotechnology and Bioinformatics from The Technical University of Denmark. He is currently a senior member of the Computational Biodiscovery group at the GLOBE institute, where he is utilizing his thorough experience in machine learning to advance projects that aim to decipher the medicinal potential of the Rainforest

Michael D. Nowak

Project collaborator, Postdoctoral researcher

University of Oslo, Norway

Michael earned his PhD from Duke University in 2010. He was then a postdoctoral researcher in Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden and Norway. His research aims to address fundamental questions in evolutionary biology using modern computational approaches.