New Associate Director of Education and Outreach

 

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Greg Gibson has been the Associate Director of Education and Outreach at NESCent since its inception, but Dr. Gibson has taken a new position as Professor in the School of Integrative Biology at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Dr. Gibson will continue his study of the genetics and genomics of complex traits, but with an emphasis on the evolution of variability in relation to human disease susceptibility.


Commenting on his time at NESCent, Greg remarked, “NESCent has been a tremendous new force for promotion of interdisciplinary research for the evolutionary biology community, and the home in Durham provides a vibrant atmosphere for post-docs and visiting scientists to engage in unfettered theoretical research. The education and outreach group communicates the scope of evolutionary research at NESCent to the scientific community, teachers, and the public at large, and is certain to prosper under the enthusiastic leadership of Brian Wiegmann.”


Brian Wiegmann is a Professor of Entomology at North Carolina State University, and has served on the Operations Committee of NESCent for the past two years. Dr. Wiegmann’s research uses molecular systematics to infer phylogenetic relationships in the order Diptera (true flies) and explore the origins and causes of major insect radiations. Major projects in his lab include participation in the NSF funded Assembling the Tree of Life (ATOL) project FLYTREE, mining the FLYTREE for phylogenetically informative molecular data pertaining to the Holometabolan orders, and using molecular systematics and paleontology to date brachyceran fly diversification. Dr. Wiegmann will be a Sabbatical Scholar at NESCent this Spring.


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