Officially Dr Barua and other updates

Several major developments have happened in the last few months.

First, I finally defended my PhD, and as of writing this post. I am now Dr Barua :) This was an incredible journey, and I couldn’t have done it without the support of many people.

Another major event was winning the Graduate Student Excellence Award from the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE). SMBE is the largest international society for evolutionary biology and the primary one in my field. In 2018 I attended their conference in Yokohama and was so inspired by the graduate student symposium. I made it a goal to one day speak there. I am delighted to have achieved this! I will talk at SMBE everywhere this year with other outstanding finalists.

Lastly, I am delighted to announce that I will start an HFSP Long-Term Fellowship with Marc Robinson-Rechavi at the University of Lausanne. I will be using life-history transitions to identify the genetic basis behind the evolution of diverse forms and functions. My PhD research focused on the evolutionary genetics of a single trait (snake venom), while my postdoc project will focus on entire organismal traits; at a much larger scale. I am excited to take up this new research direction.