A postdoctoral research position is available in the phylodynamics research group led by David
Rasmussen at NC State University in the Bioinformatics Research Centre and the Department of
Entomology and Plant Pathology. The main aim of the project is to understand how vector-
borne plant viruses adapt to new host environments and expand their host range. Viral
adaptation to new hosts will be studied in the lab, where we can experimentally manipulate
transmission between different host species and regularly re-sequence viral populations. To
reveal the genetic basis of host adaptation, experimental evolution studies will be combined
with newly developed phylodynamic methods for tracking the population dynamics of
individual viral lineages and quantifying their fitness.