
Evolutionary geneticist Moises Exposito-Alonso joined the Department of Plant Biology as a staff associate in September 2019. He investigates whether and how plants will evolve to keep pace with climate change by conducting large-scale ecological and genome sequencing experiments. He also develops computational methods to derive fundamental principles of evolution, such as how fast natural populations acquire new mutations and how past climates shaped continental-scale biodiversity patterns. His goal is to use these first principles and computational approaches to forecast evolutionary outcomes of populations under climate change to anticipate potential future biodiversity losses. Expoito-Alonso is also interested in developing genome engineering methods that can help species adapt instead of becoming extinct.
Exposito-Alonso earned his Ph.D. in ecological genomics in 2018 from the Max Planck Institute in Tübingen, Germany. He received a MSc degree in quantitative and population genetics from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and a B.S. in biology from the University of Seville, Spain. After a postdoctoral fellowship in statistical genetics at the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the Carnegie staff. He is also an Assistant Professor (by courtesy) of Biology at Stanford University. For more information see his lab page.