- Principal Investigator
- Postdoctoral Fellows
- Jonathan Flowers
- Megan Hall
- Yoshie Hanzawa
- Kristie Mather
- Christina Richards
- Samara Rubinstein
- Xianfa Xie
- Graduate Students
- Jennifer Cork
- Ian Ehrenreich
- Technicians
- Alumni
Michael obtained his undergraduate degree in chemistry at the University of the Philippines in 1985. He began his graduate work at Columbia in empirical and theoretical biophysical chemistry, obtaining an MA before moving to the University of Georgia where he got a Ph.D. in Botany (minor in Global Policy Studies) in 1993. After a two year Alfred P. Sloan Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California at San Diego, he joined the faculty at NC State. He was promoted to associate professor in 2001. In 2005, he became a William Neal Reynolds Professor of Genetics and elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Michael's research interests include the molecular evolution and ecology of development, the nature of adaptation at the molecular level, and the evolutionary genetics of plant domestication. He seems to be distressingly fond of black clothing, preferably Armani.
mp132@nyu.edu
Megan did her undergraduate work in Biology at University of California, Santa Cruz, where as a fighting banana slug, she also played volleyball and was a collegiate national champion in ultimate frisbee. She became inspired to be an evolutionary biologist while studying endangered Hawaiian honeycreepers on the slopes of Haleakala and Mauna Kea. She then began graduate school at the University of Oregon working with John Willis on the genetics of adaptation in annual and perennial Mimulus guttatus. John moved to Duke University midway through Megan’s dissertation project, and so Megan was forced to leave fair Oregon for Durham, where she completed her PhD in 2005. She is now studying the molecular population genetics of flowering time in Arabidopsis thaliana.
mchall@ncsu.edu
Yoshie graduated in plant molecular genetics from the University of Hokkaido in Japan in 2000. During her one-year post-doc experience in Japan, she found her new potential in the world and worked with George Coupland at the John Innes Centre in the United Kingdom. Shortly thereafter, she joined the Desmond Bradley lab at the John Innes Centre and worked on inflorescence development in Arabidopsis and Snapdragon. Following the message of a fortune cookie, she's decided on her current
move, this time to the USA in 2006, and is betting her future success as a scientist on the Purugganan lab.
yh21@nyu.edu
Kristie's undergraduate degree in Biochemistry is from Beloit College in
Wisconsin. After two summers in Carole Ober's HLA genetics lab at the
University of Chicago, she decided that evolutionary genetics was much
more exciting. For graduate school, she joined Glenys Thomson's lab at the
University of California at Berkeley. Her thesis work is on long distance
linkage disequilibrium in four human populations using microsatellites in
six regions of the genome. After receiving her PhD in Integrative Biology
in 2004, she joined the Purugganan lab. At NC State, she's working on the
rice genome project and some ongoing collaborations on the population
genetics of HLA genes.
kamather@ncsu.edu
Christina completed her undergraduate degree in Biology at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, PA. After an internship with Steve Pennings at the Univeristy of Georgia Marine Institute on Sapelo Island and working as a research technician for Sonia Sultan at Wesleyan University, she started doctoral work in salt marsh plant eco-physiology and genetics. She received her Ph.D. in 2004 from the University of Georgia working with Lisa Donovan and Rodney Mauricio and moved on to work on ecological genetics and epigenetics of the invasive Japanese knotweed with Massimo Pigliucci at Stony Brook University in New York. Here in the Purugganan lab, she will study epigenetic effects and microarray analyses of gene expression in wild Arabidopsis populations. When she's not in the lab, she's rowing with the NY Athletic Club in Westchester County.
christinalrichards@gmail.com
Samara got her B.A. in Anthropology from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1998 and her Ph.D. in Molecular Anthropology from Temple University in Philadelphia in January 2007. In the Laboratory of Molecular Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, she conducted numerous research projects on human population genetics, including the mtDNA diversity of Slavic populations, which formed the basis of her dissertation. As a Postdoctoral Researcher in the PuruggananŐs Laboratory at NYU, she is managing a project that seeks to understand the evolutionary genomics of rice domestication.
sr223@nyu.edu
Xianfa tries to understand every aspect of life. He obtained his undergraduate degree in microbiological engineering from Shandong University in China and then, fascinated by evolution, went on to study the evolutionary and ecological genetics of insects at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. After he obtained a master degree in ecology and evolution at SUNY-Stony Brook, he worked with Jeffrey Feder at the University of Notre Dame to study the speciation of a model system, the maggot fly (Rhagoletis pomonella) species complex. He joined the Purugganan lab as a postdoc in August 2005 and is currently studying the evolutionary genomics of rice (Oryza sativa) associated with its domestication as well as the role of epigenetics in genomic evolution. When he is not studying science in laboratory or library, he probably is doing some natural or cultural exploration and taking all kinds of pictures somewhere.
xx6@nyu.edu
Graduate Students
Jeni graduated from Western Kentucky University with a B.S. degree in recombinant genetics in 2001. Her undergraduate honors thesis was on the evaluation of Type I error rates in tests for geographic heterogeneity from microsatellite data. In addition, she worked on a project to determine the structure of Kentucky's whitetail deer population. Her research interest is focused on molecular evolution, and her current project is the identification and analysis of rapidly evolving genes in Arabidopsis thaliana. Jeni also has a special talent for freezing lab computers and accidentally killing once healthy plants.
jmreinin@unity.ncsu.edu
Ian completed his BA in Human Biology at Stanford University in 2002. His undergraduate honors project with Brendan Bohannan explored the ecology and evolution of triclosan-resistant Escherichia coli. After graduating, Ian worked first as a technician in Ward Watt's lab at Stanford University studying biochemical adaptation in Colias butterflies, and then as a guest investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the labs of John Waterbury and Eric Webb focusing on the molecular ecology of diverse cyanobacteria. Ian is a Gaann fellow and an NSF predoctoral fellow. He is currently researching the evolution of shoot architecture in Arabidopsis thaliana and he hopes to figure out why exactly variation in this trait exists. Until that unlikely time, it is appropriate that Ian is a student of the Wolfpack as he is referred to by many as the Wolfman.
ehrenreich@ncsu.edu
Angela graduated from the University of Chicago in 2007 with a BA in Biological Sciences and specialization in Genetics. In Chicago, she worked under Joy Bergelson, studying variation in presence/absence of two resistance genes found in local populations of Arabidopsis thaliana. Now she finds herself in New York City, trying to figure out what this place is all about, while working in the Purugganan lab. Angela is contemplating graduate school, where she would like to study ecology, yet seems to find herself inevitably bonded to molecular biology. When not devoting her life to the study of model plant systems, Angela is likely to be found trekking the city, foraging, or lying around her apartment listening to music. She also aspires to climb rocks, take pictures, and generally acquire new hobbies.
angela.stathos@gmail.com
Marianne Barrier
Marianne entered the graduate program in Genetics at NC State in 1996. Her research here focused on rapidly evolving genes in the Hawaaian silversword alliance, a plant adaptive radiation, and in the model plant species Arabidopsis thaliana. She is now an Associate Research Scientist at Texas A&M University.
Abee Lowman Boyles
Abee joined the laboratory as an honors undergraduate student in 1998 and studied the population genetics of Brassica domestication. She is a James B. Duke Fellow in the genetics graduate program at Duke.
Edward S. Buckler IV
Ed had an NIH postdoctoral fellowship and was co-advised by Bruce Weir and Michael Purugganan. He is now a USDA Associate Professor at Cornell.
Ana Caicedo
Ana joined the Purugganan lab as a postdoc in 2003. She worked in two areas of research: the evolutionary genomics of rice and the molecular population genetics of floral timing genes in Arabidopsis thaliana. She is now an assistant professor at University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Kathleen Engelmann
Kathleen joined the lab in 2004 as a post-doctoral researcher working on quantitative genetics of flowering time in Arabidopsis. In 2007, she accepted a position as an Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut.
Ashley R. Garrett
Ashley joined the laboratory in 2000 as an undergraduate research assistant. She is now taking her Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
Sola Halldorsdottir
Sola joined the lab in 1999 and carried out massive phenotyping of Arabidopsis plants (it's called phenomics to make it sound more respectable).
Amy L. Lawton-Rauh
At NC State, Amy studied the molecular evolution and population genetics of floral regulatory genes in the Hawaiian silversword alliance. She graduated in 2003 and is now an assistant professor at Clemson University.
Charlotte Mays
Charlotte received a BS in Biochemistry from NCSU in 2002 with minors in genetics and botany. While in the Purugganan lab, she investigated multilocus effects on flowering time in Arabidopsis.
Scott R. Miller
Scott was an NSF postdoctoral fellow in microbial ecology working with Michael Purugganan and Stephanie Curtis at NC State. He is currently an assistant professor at the University of Montana.
Jennifer Modliszewski
Jennifer joined the laboratory as an undergraduate research assistant, working on the quantitative genetics of Arabidopsis inflorescence development. She is now a PhD student in Willis's lab at Duke University.
Richard Moore
As a postdoc, Rich studied the evolutionary genetics of gene duplications in Arabidopsis thaliana with Michael. He is currently an assistant professor in Oxford1.
Kenneth Olsen
While in the Purugganan lab as a postdoc, Ken's research focused on the molecular population genetics of floral developmental genes in Arabidopsis thaliana and the evolutionary genetics of rice domestication. He is now an assistant professor at Washington Unversity in St. Louis.
David L. Remington
Dave joined the Purugganan lab in 1999 for his postdoctoral research. He is interested in the molecular evolution of plant morphological development and in plant evolutionary genomics. He has left the Purugganan lab family to join the faculty of the Biology Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Stephanie Ruzsa
Stephanie worked as a technician in the Purugganan lab at the North Carolina State University, during which she oversaw the run of the lab as well as working on some Arabidopsis projects. Enjoying the weather and life in North Carolina, she stayed at NCSU and is now working at McOwen's lab in the Department of Genetics.
Daisuke Saisho
Daisuke joined the Purugganan lab in October 2006 as a visiting scientist, working on the population genomics of barley, focusing in particular on the establishment of 'Oriental barley'. He is an assistant professor at the Research Institute for Bioresources, Okayama University.
Kristen A. Shepard
Kristen's postdoctoral research at NC State focused on the evolution of plant development, with particular emphasis on developmental variability within species. She has since obtained a tenure track position at Barnard College in New York.
Kentaro Shimizu
Kentaro came to the Purugganan laboratory in 2003, where he had been studying speciation and the evolutionary aspects of the sexual reproduction. He has just left the Purugganan lab and joined the faculty of the Institute of Plant Biology at University of Zurich.
Jane I. Suddith
In Purugganan lab, Jane studied molecular variation in plants, and provided much of the sequence data for various projects. She served as the lab manager and enforcer.
Mark C. Ungerer
Mark was a postdoc at Purugganan lab and is currently interested in understanding the genetic basis and evolution of complex traits and corollary effects on population differentiation and speciation. He is now a member of the Biology faculty at Kansas State University.
Andrew Womack
Andy worked as undergraduate on the molecular population genetics of LEAFY and APETALA1 in Arabidopsis, work that was published in Genetics. He is now an NSF predoctoral fellow in the Ph.D. program in Molecular Biology at Princeton.
1That would be Oxford, Ohio
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