Genetics Training Program Faculty

Jill Anderson Associate Professor Genetics Evolutionary genetics and population ecology of plants; global change biology; field ecology; seed dispersal ecology; frugivorous fish. Website

Oshri Avraham Assistant Professor Cellular Biology Deciphering the mechanisms that regulate the diversity of peripheral glial cells to achieve a better understanding of their role in the context of disease and injury. Website

Jeff Bennetzen Professor Genetics; Bioinformatics Plant genomics and genome evolution, transposable elements, and regulatory gene evolution. Website

Douda Bensasson Associate Professor Bioinformatics; Plant Biology Genome bioinformatics, ecological and evolutionary genomics of yeast. Website

Casey Bergman Associate Professor Bioinformatics; Genetics Website

Pengpeng Bi Assistant Professor Genetics We use​ the advanced genetic mouse models to study the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying several diseases: obesity, diabetics, muscle and heart diseases. Website

C. Robin Buell Professor GRA Eminent Scholar Chair in Crop Genomics Plant Biology, Bioinformatics Plant genome biology with a focus on crops and medicinal plants; Synthetic biology; Evolution of natural product biosynthesis Website

Gaelen Burke Associate Professor Entomology Functional and evolutionary genomics of microbial associations with insects; virology, symbiosis, immunity Website

Kelly Dawe Distinguished Research Professor Genetics; Plant Biology Plant centromere and kinetochore structure and function. Website

Katrien Devos Distinguished Research Professor Bioinformatics; Plant Biology Crop genetics, comparative genomics and genome evolution. Website

Diana Downs Distinguished Research Professor Microbiology Bacterial physiology and metabolic integration using biochemical, genetic and metabolomics approaches. Website

Kelly Dyer Professor Genetics Molecular evolution and evolutionary genetics, in particular genetic conflict, sex chromosome evolution, genetics of adaptation and speciation, and host-parasite interactions. Website

Arthur Edison Professor GRA Eminent Scholar Biochemistry & Molecular Biology; Genetics Metabolomics and systems biology of Caenorhabditis elegans using NMR, mass spec, and computational approaches. Website

Jonathan Eggenschwiler Associate Professor Genetics; Neuroscience Genetic analysis of mouse development; cell fate specification in the embryonic central nervous system; patterning of the body plan’s left-right axis. Website

Courtney Ellison Assistant Professor Microbiology Bacterial adhesion and biofilm formation, dynamics of bacterial nanomachines, microbial subcellular organization. Website

Jorge Escalante-Semerena UGA Foundation Distinguished Professor Microbiology Prokaryotic metabolism and physiology with emphasis on protein acetylation, toxic metabolites, and complex metabolic pathway analysis, integration. Website

David Garfinkel Professor Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Retrovirus-like transposons in budding yeast, control of transposition, restriction factors. Website

Travis Glenn Professor Environmental Health Sciences; Bioinformatics; Toxicology Environmental Genomics; Crocodilians; Reptilian Genomics; Molecular Ecology. Website

Mary Goll Associate Professor Genetics Epigenetic regulation in the context of development and cancer. We focus on heterochromatin and primarily use zebrafish as a model system. Website

Diego Huet Assistant Professor Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences The Huet Lab will use metabolomics and CRISPR-based approaches to understand the mitochondrial and organellar biology of a class of protozoan parasites, the apicomplexans. Website

Brendan Hunt Associate Professor Entomology Behavioral and evolutionary genetics and epigenetics of social insects. Website

Natalia Ivanova Associate Professor Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Genetics Transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms regulating preimplantation development, pluripotency, differentiation and cellular reprogramming in humans Website

Jessica Kissinger Distinguished Research Professor Bioinformatics; Genetics Parasite genomics and the biology of genome evolution. Website

James Lauderdale Associate Professor Cellular Biology; Neuroscience Developmental neurobiology: molecular genetic mechanisms of vertebrate eye and forebrain development. Website

Jim Leebens-Mack Associate Professor Plant Biology Phylogenetics, genetics of diversification including speciation; molecular basis of adaptation; evolutionary genomics; evolution of plant reproduction; organismal and molecular coevolution. Website

Zachary Lewis Associate Professor Microbiology Chromatin structure and function; Epigenetics; Eukaryotic genome stability; Histone H1. Website

Douglas Menke Professor Genetics Developmental Regulation of Gene Expression; Evolution of Vertebrate Morphology. Website

Aaron P. Mitchell Professor Microbiology We use genetic and genomic approaches to understand mechanisms of fungal pathogenesis and drug resistance. Website

Brad Nelms Assistant Professor Plant Biology Cell differentiation during plant reproduction, genomics and gene regulatory networks, single-cell RNA-sequencing, reprogramming cell fate Website

Andrew Paterson Regents Professor and Head, Plant Genome Mapping Laboratory Plant Biology; Genetics; Bioinformatics My unit’s work addresses dimensions of plant genome biology relevant toward a more bio-based economy, linking increased fundamental knowledge to improved human lives. Website

Rachel Roberts-Galbraith Assistant Professor Cellular Biology; Neuroscience Regeneration and development; understanding cellular/molecular mechanisms that underlie neural regeneration in planarians. Website

Tania Rozario Assistant Professor Genetics Understanding mechanisms that regulate stem cell behavior, regeneration, and reproductive development in tapeworms Website to come

Paul Schliekelman Associate Professor Bioinformatics My research group develops statistical and and computational approaches to better extract information from biological data, particularly in the genotype-phenotype relationship. Website

Walter K. Schmidt Jr. Professor Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Scholar Biochemistry & Molecular Biology; Neuroscience Molecular cell biology and biochemistry of proteases associated with isoprenylated protein maturation and amyloidogenic peptide degradation; cancer; Alzheimer’s disease. Website

Bob Schmitz Professor Genetics Population epigenomics and mechanisms of epigenetic inheritance. Website

Mike Strand Distinguished Research Professor Entomology Molecular and evolutionary biology of insect parasites; virology, immunology, symbiont evolution, reproduction. Website

Andrea Sweigart Professor Genetics Evolutionary genetics and genomics of natural plant populations. Website

Michael Terns Distinguished Research Professor Biochemistry & Molecular Biology; Genetics; Microbiology We study CRISPR-Cas immune systems that protect prokaryotes from viruses and provide powerful research tools for important biotechnology and biomedical applications. Website

M. Stephen Trent UGA Foundation Distinguished Professor Infectious Diseases Characterizing the assembly of bacterial surface structures, Development of vaccines for viral and bacterial pathogens, Systems approaches to understanding microbial diseases Website

C.J. Tsai Professor, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar Bioinformatics; Genetics; Plant Biology Growth-defense tradeoff, phenylpropanoid metabolism and carbon allocation, gene family evolution and functional diversification, alternative splicing and gene duplication. Website

Esther van der Knaap Professor Genetics; Plant Biology The regulation of fruit shape and size of tomato and other Solanaceous crops Website

Kevin Vogel Assistant Professor Entomology Integrating physiology, genomics, evolution, and microbial symbiosis to understand the biology of insect vectors of disease. Website

John Wares Professor Genetics Ecological genetics of natural populations. Website

Michael White Associate Professor Genetics Evolutionary Genomics and Sex Chromosome Evolution. Website

Kaixiong Ye Assistant Professor Genetics; Bioinformatics Nutritional Genomics; Human Genetics; Population and Quantitative Genomics; Gene-Diet Interaction during human evolution and in metabolic diseases; Website

Nadja Zeltner Assistant Professor Biochemistry & Molecular Biology; Cellular Biology; Neuroscience Effects of pathological stress on cells of the peripheral nervous system and the adrenal gland. In vitro disease modeling using human pluripotent stem cells. Website