My academic and professional interests are ecology and evolutionary biology of malaria parasites and their hosts. I am applying phylogenetic and molecular clock methods to understand host switches and the radiation of haemosporidian parasite groups in their vertebrate hosts, focusing on lizard, avian, and mammalian parasites. This research provides the evolutionary blueprint to characterize putative molecular adaptations and will allow us to understand the evolution of gene encoding proteins that are considered as vaccine candidates for human malaria. The parasite polymorphisms and their geographic differentiation are also topics of great basic interest because they provide information about the parasite demographic history and/or phylogeography. In addition, I am also interested in the rate and mode of evolution of the mitochondrial genome in Haemosporida and their vertebrate hosts, especially in birds. Finally, I am coordinating the Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) laboratory at iGEM; this collaboratory is expected to support its participants in the preparation of libraries to be used in genomic analyses.