Email: amacp[at]zoology[dot]ubc[dot]ca
Twitter: @ailenemacp
I don’t like math. I love math. Particularly, as applied to evolution and population genetics. I recently completed my Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia, Canada, where I worked with Dr. Sally Otto and will begin a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
My PhD thesis focused on coevolution in the context of infectious disease. I explored how coevolution affects disease dynamics and vice versa, how coevolution affects our ability to identify disease genes, and how ecological-coevolutionary and epidemiological-coevolutionary feedbacks shape host genetic variation. Since completing my PhD, I have continued to explore questions at the intersection of evolution and epidemiology, working with Dr. Matt Pennell to develop robust phylodynamic methods for inferring epidemiological rates.
I enjoy pondering a diverse set of evolutionary questions in topics including range expansion, hybridization, local adaptation, parallel evolution, and adaptation with gene flow. I was introduced to population genetics and evolutionary modelling by Dr. Scott Nuismer at the University of Idaho, U.S., where we worked on several theoretical and statistical models in evolution.