Congratulations, Dr. Moises Exposito-Alonso!

‘Summa cum laude’ for thesis on climate change & evolution

Moi defended his thesis on climate change and genetic evolution in Arabidopsis thaliana yesterday. For his effort, he was awarded a ‘summa cum laude’ — with distinction. The examiners agreed that the work ‘advances our knowledge on how and whether different populations of a species will genetically adapt to the changing climate.’

The thesis touches on many important topics from polygenic adaptation to climate change, to the potential of new mutations contributing to rapid adaptation in colonizing populations, and machine learning methods that combine field experiments, genetic and climate data to predict which populations can adapt to climate change and which ones are most at risk from climate change.