David Rand, Ph.D., Director of COBRE Center for Computational Biology of Human Disease, Co-Director of Computational Biology Core, Stephen T. Olney Professor of Natural History, Chair of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Rhode Island
Professor Rand is interested in how natural selection acts on genes and genomes. His research focuses on how the mitochondrial genome and its interactions with the nuclear genome influence animal performance, evolutionary fitness, and aging.
A second major interest is how thermal selection influences the genetic composition of populations.
This work aims to identify the genetic interactions that allow organisms to adapt to environmental heterogeneity. More details are can be found at www.davidrandlab.org.