Welcome to Our Lab!
We study Evolutionary One Health, focusing on the intersection of ecology, evolution, and human/animal health. Our research spans topics from infectious disease dynamics to community ecology and computational methods.
We strive to understand how ecosystems, pathogens, and communities evolve, and how these processes influence global health initiatives.
Recent News
- I've just started a new position at UTas School of Medicine as a lecturer in public health - stay tuned for new PhD and postdoc positions in the One Health space.
- Eva Baukes doing Honours in the lab with our amazing undergrad Evelyn Collins continues her mosquito trapping efforts in North East Tasmania to screen for viruses such as Ross River and Japanese Encephalitis.
- Talia Brav-Cubitt is doing a PhD and our postdoc Kotaro Takano are currently using Nanopore long read adaptive sequencing to help track spread of Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumour Disease.
- 18th of March 2025: Nick is planning on attending the International Virus Bioinformatics Meeting in Lisbon in May. Let him know if you want to meet!
- 11th April 2025: Had a lab meeting welcoming Ryan Leadbetter to the team. Welcome Ryan - he is going to continue to develop my machine learning package MrIML. We also discussed this interesting paper on nanopore influenza sequencing: https://academic.oup.com/ve/article/11/1/veaf010/8020575?login=true. Some exciting advances in using direct RNA sequencing for sequencing viruses!
- 10th June 2025: In collaboration with Jane Younger and the Royal Hobart Hospital, our lab is actively optimizing sequencing and qPCR protocols for highly pathogenic influenza (HPAI), ensuring we can assist with current surveilance efforts in Antarctica and and preparing for any potential emergence in Tasmania.
- 2nd Sptember 2025: This week the lab is gearing up to host the 4th Tasmanian and Antarctic One Health Conference. Going to be a great selection of talks spanning health silos with a focus on avian infleuenza and Tasman devils as a model system.