People

Principal Investigator:

C. Tomomi Parins-Fukuchi

I am a computational evolutionary biologist rooted in paleobiology and phylogenetics. I develop new computational approaches to understand the evolutionary processes and patterns underlying the emergence of novel and complex phenotypic traits. I seek to uncover the limits of our ability to infer the microevolutionary processes that drove large-scale evolutionary patterns over deep time by combining information from genomes, phenotypes, and the fossil record. I explore these questions across a range of fossil, and sometimes living, systems.

Postdocs:

Dr. Eric Hagen

Eric is a macroevolutionary biologist interested in questions at large scales: he is excited by topics like diversification of speciose clades, evolution over long time scales, and global biogeography. Eric’s doctoral research focused on the macroevolutionary consequences of plant polyploidy. In the Parins-Fukuchi lab, he is working on macroevolutionary models that account for incomplete fossil preservation and stratigraphic biases. If you’re interested in his work, please check out his website.

Grad students:

Michelle Su

Michelle started her PhD in the Parins-Fukuchi lab in September 2023. She is using the rich fossil record of sand dollars to examine how microevolutionary processes scale up to macroevolutionary phenomena, incorporating ideas such as evo-devo, persistent intraspecific variation, species selection, and evolvability. During her undergrad at UofT, she completed an honour’s thesis on the evolution of scale morphology in Anolis lizards and worked on various projects involving avian museum specimens and phylogenies.

Thomas Wildeboer

Thomas graduated with an Honour’s Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Toronto in 2023. In his final year of undergraduate studies, he completed an honour’s thesis with the Sztepanacz lab studying the substitution of genetic covariance matrices with phenotypic covariance matrices. Currently, he studies the evolution of genetic covariance with computer simulations as a master’s student, co-supervised by Dr. Jacqueline Sztepanacz. He is broadly interested in evolutionary genetics with a focus in computational methods. Outside of research, Thomas enjoys software development, science fiction novels, and exploring Toronto with friends.

Undergraduates:

Yuechen Hao

More soon

Joining the lab:

Feel free to get in touch if you are interested in doing grad school at UofT EEB. Also get in touch if you are interested in doing a postdoc– numerous funding possibilities exist.