Advisory Board and Editors Evolutionary Studies
Diaa Abd El-Moneim
My academic journey began with an MSc in Plant Breeding and Genetics at Suez Canal University, where my research focused on evaluating drought tolerance and disease resistance in wheat, providing a solid foundation in abiotic stress tolerance. This early work fueled my commitment to understanding and addressing plant resilience under stress conditions. Thanks to an Erasmus Mundus scholarship, I pursued my PhD at Complutense University of Madrid, where I investigated the molecular mechanisms underlying aluminum stress tolerance in rye. Notably, I was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship funded by AECID just before defending my thesis—a pivotal achievement that underscored the relevance of my research. This fellowship enabled me to join the National Center of Biotechnology (CNB) in Madrid. I gained expertise in proteomics, gene expression analysis, and molecular tool development to improve plant abiotic stress resilience. These experiences greatly expanded my knowledge of gene regulation and stress physiology and led to high-impact publications in peer-reviewed journals.
Dr. Abd El Moneim’s research encompasses multiple domains, including the study of morphological , physiological, and molecular mechanisms that govern plant responses to stress factors such as salinity, drought , aluminum toxicity, heat, and pathogens. His work in identifying gene families and stress-responsive proteins is complemented by his efforts to apply DNA barcoding and chloroplast genomic assemblies for species identification and development of molecular markers, as well as contributing to taxonomical and evolutionary concepts and identifying transcriptional regulators critical for stress adaptation, with particular emphasis on crops like wheat and wild plants adapted to extreme environments. His methodologies include designing and analyzing field trials , protein analysis, nucleic acid extraction, fingerprinting , GWAS , and the characterization of chloroplast genomes. Dr. Abd El Moneim’s expertise in molecular breeding and genomics focuses on improving abiotic stress tolerance in staple crops, especially for agriculture in developing countries.
Virginia Abdala
Professor of General Biology at the Facultad de Ciencias Naturales and Dean of the same faculty at the Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina. Researcher at CONICET and member of the Instituto de Biodiversidad Neotropical (UNT-CONICET) in Tucumán, Argentina.
Md Atique Ahmed
Dr Md Atique Ahmed is at present working as a Scientist under the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Govt. of India at the Regional centre of Northeast India (RMRC, NE), Dibrugarh, Assam, India.
Dr Ahmed's scientific career has been dedicated to the study of protozoan parasites in humans and primates, which includes all Plasmodium species, primarily Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax, Plasmodium ovale and Plasmodium knowlesi. He has genetically and functionally characterised many plasmodium invasion antigens. His research interest mainly focuses population genetics/gemomics of Plasmodium parasites.
Ulysses Paulino Albuquerque
I am interested in understanding all the dimensions and effects of human relations with nature, this is the reason my approach is interdisciplinar. My research interests involve anthropology, evolutionary psychology, cultural evolution, human behavioral ecology, ethnobiology, human ecology, ecology and evolution. I try to understand how we co-evolve with the environment and other species. This is why I explore how the human mind has been evolutionarily shaped to deal with the complexity of the world we live in, as well as all the processes associated with the transmission and storage (memory) of information and strategies for exploration and management of natural resources. I am also interested in the evolution of science and scientometry, and cognitive and cultural evolution in the human species.
Vivek Anantharaman
Computational biology Scientist. Research interest includes studying protein structure, function and sequence, evolution of domains and biological systems to glean information about the biology of organisms.
Maria Anisimova
Since 2014, senior research fellow and lecturer at the Institute of Applied Simulations of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW). Editor of BMC Evol Biol and PLoS ONE. In 2012 edited a book in 2 volumes "Evolutionary Genomics: Statistical and computational methods".
Maria del Coro Arizmendi
Dr. María del Coro Arizmendi is a biologist and full-time professor within the Facultad de Estudios Superiores Iztacala at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). She has over 26 years of academic experience focusing on the ecology, evolution, and conservation of birds. She has published extensively with 69 indexed articles, 11 books, and 35 book chapters, supported by funding from national and international agencies.
Her contributions include the "Gardens for Hummingbirds" project, promoting habitat restoration in urban areas, and have been recognized with numerous awards, including the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Recognition in 2018 and the Academic Merit Award at UNAM.
Luisa Azevedo
Researcher at the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (ICBAS), University of Porto, and collaborator of the Population Genetics and Evolution Group of i3S-Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde. Scientific topics include molecular basis of phenotype-genotype relationships, mechanisms underlying epistatic interactions under the compensatory mutation model, and the dynamics involved in amino acid substitution at the protein structural level.
Shaw Badenhorst
I am a zooarchaeologist at the Evolutionary Studies Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. I analyse animal remains (bones and teeth) from archaeological and fossil sites. I have studied animal remains from South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Canada (British Columbia) and the USA (Southwest). My focus of my research is on the origins of hunting, the spread of livestock, and taphonomy.
Jürg Bähler
Jürg Bähler is a Professor of Systems Biology at University College London. His laboratory studies genome regulation during cellular proliferation, quiescence, and ageing using fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe) as a model system. They apply multiple genetic, computational and genome-wide approaches for systems-level understanding of regulatory processes and complex relationships between genotype, phenotype, and environment, including roles of genome variation and evolution, transcriptome regulation, and non-coding RNAs.
Jürg Bähler is an elected Member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, and he received a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award and a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.
Francisco Balao
Francisco Balao is associate lecture of Plant Biology at the University of Seville; Past post-doc Marie-Curie fellow in the Department of Plant Systematics at the University of Vienna.
Research interests are mainly focused on how plant genomes interact with its environment across ecological and evolutionary timescale. We try to elucidate the mechanistic bases of the biodiversity through studies of molecular phylogenetics and phylogenomics, phylogeography, cytogenetics, ecophysiology, transcriptomics and reproductive biology.
David A Baltrus
Associate Professor interested in evolutionary microbiology and genomics