Dr. María C. Ávila Arcos, Laboratorio Internacional de Investigación sobre Genoma Humano, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Campus Juriquilla, México

https://liigh.unam.mx/profile/dra-maria-c-avila-arcos/ 

Title: Ancient Pathogen Genomes and What They Reveal About the Colonization of Mexico

Dr. María Ávila-Arcos is an Associate Professor at the International Laboratory for Human Genome Research in the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She completed her undergraduate studies in Genomic Sciences at UNAM and later a obtained her doctorate degree in palaeogenomics at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. She subsequently did a postdoc in population genetics at Stanford University. Her work has focused on the analysis of ancient genomes from a variety of species, including plants, viruses, animals, and humans. Her current research interests turn around how the genomes of the Mexican populations have changed, as well as of various pathogens that have infected them, over time. 

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Dr. Joseph l. Graves, Jr., Professor of Biological Sciences, Department of Biology, North Carolina A&T State University

https://www.ncat.edu/employee-bio.php?directoryID=113858234

Title: Embedded racism: A critical yet neglected health determinant in Evolutionary Medicine.

Dr. Joseph Graves, Jr. received his Ph.D. in Environmental, Evolutionary and Systematic Biology from Wayne State University in 1988. In 1994 he was elected a Fellow of the Council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS.) In 2012, he was chosen as one of the “Sensational Sixty” commemorating 60 years of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Award. In 2017, he was listed as an “Outstanding Graduates” in Biology at Oberlin College; and was an “Innovator of the Year” in US Black Engineer Magazine. His research in the evolutionary genomics of adaptation shapes our understanding of biological aging and bacterial responses to nanomaterials. He is presently Associate Director/co-PI of the Precision Microbiome Engineering (PreMiEr) Engineering Research Center of Excellence (Gen-4 ERC) funded by the National Science Foundation (2022—2027).

Dr. James DeGregori, Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, Molecular Biology and Immunology

https://medschool.cuanschutz.edu/biochemistry/people/primary-faculty/degregori-james/degregori-lab/home

Title: Somatic evolution - causes and consequences

Dr. James DeGregori is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics (faculty since 1997) and Deputy Director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center. He has degrees from the University of Texas at Austin (B.A. Microbiology) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD Biology), and received postdoctoral training at Duke University. He holds the Courtenay and Lucy Patten Davis Endowed Chair in Lung Cancer Research, and is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Aging And Cancer. His lab studies the evolution of cancer, in the context of their Adaptive Oncogenesis model, with a focus on how aging, smoking, Down Syndrome, and other insults influence cancer initiation and responses to therapy. In this model, mutations face fitness landscapes that vary with age, genetics, or following carcinogen exposure. These fitness landscapes are highly dependent on the state of the tissue microenvironment in which stem cells reside. The lab has developed this cancer model based on classic evolutionary principles, and substantiated this model by theoretical, experimental and computational studies.

Dr. Yana Kamberov, Asst Prof of Genetics at University of Pennsylvania

People | kamberovlab

Title: The genetic origins of the sweaty and naked ape

Dr. Yana Kamberov joined the Department of Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 2016 where her lab's research focuses on the genetic mechanisms governing the development and evolution of the skin and its resident appendages including sweat glands, hair follicles, and mammary glands. This research has led to the identification of the genetic basis for adaptive human skin traits that not only differentiate modern human populations but also distinguish humans from all other primates. A major application of research in the Kamberov lab is to leverage these evolutionary and developmental findings to establish theraputic platforms for targeted regeneration of skin appendages, particualrly sweat glands, in humans. Yana is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania from which she received her Bachelor's degree in Biology and in Anthropology.  She received her Ph.D. in Cell and Developmental Biology from Harvard University. As a post-doc, Yana joined the lab of Dr. Cliff Tabin in the Genetics Department of Harvard Medical School and was co-mentored by Pardis Sabeti (Harvard Systems Biology Department, HHMI, Broad Institute), Daniel Lieberman (Human Evolutionary Biology Department, Harvard), and Bruce Morgan (Dermatology Department, Mass General Hospital and Harvard Medical School).