Professor and Chair
College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) / School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) | Departments of Genetics (CALS) and Medical Genetics (SMPH)
Hometown: Caracas, Venezuela
I obtained my PhD in cellular and developmental biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after studying genetics as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley. I completed a postdoctoral fellowship in developmental genetics at the Max Planck Institute in Germany and joined the faculty of the UW–Madison Laboratory of Genetics in 1999. Since 2020, I have served as chair for the joint departments of Genetics in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and Medical Genetics in the School of Medicine and Public Health.
Talks can also be offered in Spanish.
Talks:
Biopreserving animal genetic diversity in the Great Lakes Region
Compounding environmental stressors are threatening the ability of the natural world to maintain a healthy amount of genetic diversity for its long-term survival. Our efforts are to establish working pipelines for acquisition such genetic diversity in the wild, and to develop methods to preserve and re-introduce such diversity.