Team Bio

Victor A. Albert

I am a plant evolutionary genomicist with special interest in genome adaptive landscapes, the evolution of genome size, and the evolutionary roles of small-scale gene duplications. My genome projects have included the carnivorous bladderwort plant (Utricularia), the basal angiosperm Amborella, avocado, birch, and diploid coffee. In addition to my work on plant genomics, I have a long history of research in phylogenetic systematics of flowering plants, and on the molecular basis for plant morphological development (evo-devo). Together with project collaborator Prof. Charlotte Lindqvist, I published two papers on the phylogeny, biogeography and conservation of African violet species, in 1999 and 2001. I am a graduate of Brown University (BA and MS, 1987 and 1989) and the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill (PhD, 1992).

Aureliano Bombarely

I am a genobotanist seduced by the colorful diversity of plant phenotypes. My research is focused on the study of plant domestication and evolution using genomic approaches such as whole genome sequencing, reduced representation genotyping, RNA-seq and ChIP-Seq. I have been involved in several plant genome sequencing projects such as tomato, watermelon and Nicotiana benthamiana. Currently I am using floral crops from the 18th century such as begonias, florist’s gloxinias and petunias as models to study the link between genomic and phenotypic changes during the plant domestication process. I graduated from the University of Malaga, Spain, in 2001. I obtained my PhD degree from the same university in 2007 studying the ripening process in strawberries. Then I moved to Ithaca, NY, for a first postdoc in the Sol Genomic Network database at the Boyce Thompson Institute (from 2008 to 2012; Bioinformatics in Solanaceae), and a second one in the Department of Plant Biology at Cornell University (from 2012 to 2014; Systematics in Polyploids). I am currently a Translational Genomics Assistant Professor in the Department of Horticulture at Virginia Tech.

Charlotte Lindqvist

I am an evolutionary biologist with interests and expertise in genetic research on the speciation process. My research has included many different systems over the years, from African violets to Hawaiian plants, and among animals, from polar bears to walruses. In every case, my research has been focused on the genetic basis for how species evolve, and most particularly on the effects of hybridization in this process. My work on bear genomes, for example, has demonstrated that polar, brown, and black bears reproductively intermingled at different points in their evolutionary histories, likely sharing genetic variants that could have been put to adaptive use in the genomes of recipient species. My studies of the native Hawaiian members of the mint family, Lamiaceae, have similarly shown that interspecies gene transfer has contributed to the process of diversification in that magnificently variable plant lineage. I received my PhD from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark - working on African violet molecular systematics - and thereafter I performed postdoctoral research at the University of Oslo in Norway. I have been an Assistant Professor at the University at Buffalo since 2010, where I recently received notice of pending promotion to Associate Professor.

Jarkko Salojärvi

I am originally an engineer who somewhere along his studies got fascinated by the complexity of biology. I have long experience of analyzing big data from different sources, and I see biology as the field which gives the biggest challenge and also greatest opportunity to further our understanding of the world. My research is so-called data-driven science, where data is analyzed as it is, without any prior hypotheses. It has been intriguing to see how the patterns of evolution and adaptation stand out when analyzing genomic data. My biggest research project so far has been the silver birch genome, but I have expertise also from microbial ecology.

I have an MSc in engineering physics from Helsinki University of Technology and defended my DSc thesis in information sciences (machine learning) at Aalto University in 2008. Since then I have been doing bioinformatics at University of Helsinki.