Claudia Bank is heading the Evolutionary Dynamics group at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência in Oeiras, Portugal. She studies adaptation and speciation at the interface between theoretical and empirical biology using a combination of theoretical modeling, computational methods, and statistical data analysis.
Coming from a undergraduate background in mathematics and physics, Claudia did her PhD in the framework of the “Vienna Graduate School of Population Genetics” working on speciation models with Joachim Hermisson, and, during a short-term scholarship at UT Austin, with Mark Kirkpatrick. As a postdoc in Jeff Jensen's lab at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, she applied her modeling expertise to the a nalysis and interpretation of experimental-evolution data. As a 'dry' lab, work of the Evolutionary Dynamics Group is not restricted to a particular organism, scale of observation, or experimental method. Current projects involve experimental-evolution data from Escherichia coli, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, influenza A virus, and Drosophila, and data from natural populations of Formica ants. Using various mathematical, statistical, and computational tools, and complemented by targeted collaborations with 'wet' lab researchers, Claudia's work is dominated by questions about the prevalence and importance of epistatic interactions, the architecture of adaptation to challenging environments, and the predictability of evolution. Please check the website of Claudia's research group on Evolutionary Dynamics

Rafael Guerrero is a population geneticist working in the Department of Biology at Indiana University, Bloomington (USA). In his research, he uses a combination of computational and theoretical approaches to understand the role of genome structure and gene regulation in processes of population divergence.
Rafael did his doctoral work at the University of Texas at Austin, where he developed coalescent models for locally adapted chromosome inversions that provide a statistical foundation for population genomic studies. As a postdoctoral fellow, he has used transcriptomic and genomic data to research the evolution of reproductive barriers and regulatory divergence. He has studied a variety of systems -from malaria mosquitoes and tree frogs to tomatoes and wildflowers - inferring and quantifying evolutionary forces in natural populations through statistical tools such as likelihood maximization and Bayesian methods.

Jan Engelstädter is an evolutionary biologist based at The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. He is broadly interested in the evolutionary biology of sexual processes, parasitism, and the interplay between these phenomena. His group uses a combination of mathematical modelling and experimental work to address fundamental questions within this exciting field. Jan did his PhD at University College London, working with Greg Hurst on the evolution of reproductive parasites such as the infamous bacterium Wolbachia. Following a short postdoc at Harvard University with David Haig, he did another postdoc with Sebastian Bonhoeffer at ETH Zurich where, in 2011, he also became a junior group leader. In 2012 is started a position at The University of Queensland where he is currently an ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer. Current projects in which Jan's lab is involved include the evolution of gene exchange in bacteria, the evolution of antibiotic resistance, recombination rate evolution during speciation, and the evolution of asexual reproduction in animals. For more information, please visit Jan's lab website.