Evolutionary Genomics and Transcriptomics

Nicholas J. Marra, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Biology
Governors State University
This fall I started as an Assistant Professor of Biology at Governors State University after 3 years teaching at Drury University in Springfield, MO where I had the absolute pleasure of working with bright and motivated undergraduates in a liberal arts setting and now am getting to do that with both undergraduates and M.S. students in the Chicagoland area!.  In the classroom I teach Introductory Molecular Biology, Genetics, and Conservation Genetics.  As we get off the ground my lab is using computational and sequence based approaches to explore questions regarding physiological adaptations and aspects of genome evolution.

Previously I worked as  a postdoc in the lab of Dr. Michael Stanhope at Cornell University working on the genome sequence of the white shark and population genomics of the great hammerhead shark. on the comparative transcriptomics of osmoregulation in desert rodents as part of my Ph.D. with Dr. Andrew DeWoody at Purdue University.