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Change (Development & Evolution)

One of biology's grand challenges is to explain how genes control the growth and development of plants and animals, and how these processes change through evolution.

At Hopkins, our work extends from investigating population level changes that effect coral response to global climate change, to the origins of phyla and the development of animal body plans. 

David Epel

Phone: (831) 655-6200

Christopher Lowe

Phone: (831) 655-6226
Professor Lowe trained as a biologist in the UK at Sussex University. He moved to The USA for graduate training with Greg Wray at SUNY Stonybrook in the Department of Ecology and Evolution, where he worked on the evolution of body plans and the origin of the echinoderms. Following his PhD. he worked as a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley working on the origin of chordates focussing on the evolution of the vertebrate central nervous system, first in Mike Levine's lab, then with John Gerhart and Marc Kirschner from Harvard. His first academic position was as an Assistant Professor in the Department (...)

Stephen Palumbi

Phone: (831) 655-6210
Steve has long been fascinated by how quickly the world around us changes. Work on the genomics of marine organisms tries to focus on basic evolutionary questions but also on practical solutions to questions about how to preserve and protect the diverse life in the sea. Steve has lectured extensively on human-induced evolutionary change, has used genetic detective work to identify whales, seahorses, rockfish and sharks for sale in retail markets, and is developing genomic methods to help find ocean species resistant to climate change. Work on corals in American Samoa has identified (...)