The dos Reis Lab is located in the School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences at Queen Mary University of London.

Mario dos Reis, Reader in Statistical Phylogenetics

Mario’s research in evolutionary biology focuses on obtaining inferences from genomic data to understand species adaptation and evolution through time. His research involves both, the development of statistical tools to analyse molecular sequences, and the application of those tools in empirical data analysis. He is particularly interested in working out the timeline of mammal evolution and other animals, as case studies in evolutionary biology. Mario has a degree in Biology from Universidad Simón Bolívar, Caracas, Venezuela (2000), and MSc (2003) and PhD (2010) in Bioinformatics from Birkbeck College, London.

Muthukumaran Panchaksaram, PhD student

Muthukumaran graduated as B.Tech (Bachelor of technology) in biotechnology at Sathyabama University, Chennai, India. He then pursued further studies in the same branch as a M.Tech student at Vellore Institute of Technology. His research focussed on designing a statistical QSAR (quantitative structure-activity relationship) model using multivariate image analysis for the prediction of biological activities of flavonoid derivatives, pharmaceutically active against acetylcholinesterase and HIV-1 inhibitors. As a PhD student in the lab, he is working on statistical methods to detect adaptation in molecular sequences.

Joseph Minus, PhD student

Joseph is a PhD student on the London NERC DTP working with Mario dos Reis at Queen Mary University of London and Anjali Goswami at the Natural History Museum. His research is focused on integrating phylogenomic and continuous morphological data, in the form of 3D cranial landmarks and curves, to estimate species divergence times in mammals. To achieve this aim, Joseph is assembling a morphological database of 3D cranial scans four thousands of mammals at the genus level. Joseph studied Zoology at the University of Exeter and completed a masters in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation at Imperial College London.

Siri Olsen, PhD student

Siri is a PhD student on the London NERC DTP working with Mario dos Reis (QMUL) and with Aida Gómez-Robles (Anthropology, UCL). Siri will be working on integrating genetic and morphometric data to understand early homo evolution.

Andaman Kaosung, MSc student,

Andaman will be exploring Bayesian modelling of trait evolution in birds, as part of his final-year project for his MSc in Biodiversity and Conservation.

Yuqing Peng, PhD student

Yuqing obtained a BEng in Environmental Engineering at Chengdu University of Information Technology, China, and then an MSc in Environmental Engineering at Cranfield University, UK. During the MSc period, Yuqing was trained in R, C and HPC for modelling and statistical analysis of sample data. As a PhD student in the dos Reis lab, Yuqing will focus on phylogenetic models of natural selection and the molecular clock to analyse phylogenomic data from more than 300 mammal species. Yuqing is currently on a one-year break from her studies.

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Past Members

Gustavo Ballen (2021-2023), Postdoc

Gustavo finished his PhD in São Paulo, Brazil, and joined the lab to work on the development and application of morphological models in Bayesian models of divergence time estimation. You can checkout Gustavo’s research in his homepage.

Nayelí Escudero Castelán (2017-2021), PhD student

Nayelí worked with Prof. Maurice Elphick and Dr. dos Reis on the evolution of neuropeptides in echinoderms.

Sandra Álvarez-Carretero (2016-2020), PhD student

Sandra obtained a BSc in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Universidad Rovira I Virgili, in Spain, and then an MSc in Bioinformatics at Högskolan I Skövde, in Sweden. Sandra was a PhD student in the lab between 2016 and 2020 working on the application of Bayesian MCMC statistical methods to study species divergences through time. She finished her PhD with eight papers and she won the 2019 Ernst Mayr Award from the Society of Systematic Biologists.

Lucas Freitas (2019), Postdoc

Lucas visited the lab between January 2019 and January 2020, to work on methods of clock dating, and to detect positive selection and convergent evolution in molecular sequences.

Gabriela Calegario (2019), Postdoc

Gabriela visited the lab between January 2019 and January 2020, to work on phylogenetic identification of prokaryotes from core samples of the ocean floor under the Amazon River discharge plume.

Iván Ezquerra Romano (2018), PhD student

Iván did his PhD rotation (BBSRC LIDo) in the lab, using the multi-species coalescent to date divergences among human populations.

Joseph Deane (2021), MSc student

Joseph worked on assessing the effect of rate correlation among loci (i.e. the lineage effect) on Bayesian estimation of divergence times.

Hasmita Patel (2018), MSc student

Hasmita did her MSc Bioinformatics project at the dos Reis lab on analysis of human populations under the Bayesian multi-species coalescent model.

Updated 20th January 2024.