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Research and Interests

I am a CONACYT Research Associate (S.N.I. level 2) at the Centro de Investigación Científica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada, (CICESE) Baja California, México since January 2017. My interests are in evolutionary biology of invertebrates, including phylogenetics and biogeography, answering questions about the origin of taxa and their distributions. I am also interested in behavioural ecology, in particular in model-mimicry systems.

A list of my publications can be found here.

Academic History

From 2014 to 2016 I was a Postdoctoral research fellow at the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales in Buenos Aires, Argentina carrying out projects on molecular phylogenetics and historical biogeography of South American arachnids (anyphaenid spiders and bothriurid scorpions) in Dr. Martin Ramirez' group.

From 2012 to mid-2013 I was collaborating on phylogenetics and biogeography projects led by Dr. Simon Loader at the Biogeography division of the Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Basel, Switzerland. The projects involved amphibians and reptiles from Africa (Ethiopia and Tanzania).

From 2010 to 2012 I was based at the Instituto de Biologia, Universidad National Autonoma de Mexico as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Alejandro Zaldivar's lab, carrying out a project on molecular phylogenetics of Notiospathius, a genus of braconid wasps found in the Neotropics.

I did my PhD at James Cook University's School of Marine and Tropical Biology in Townsville, Australia on the dynamics of salticid-ant mimicry systems. I studied behaviour, taxonomy and phylogenetics of Myrmarachne, a genus of ant-mimicking jumping spiders. After my PhD I worked in the CrozierLab at JCU on various projects including phylogenetics and population genetics of ants (genera Polyrhachis and Myrmecia respectively).

I obtained my Bachelors degree with Honours in Zoology from the University of Reading (UK), after which I spent some time as a lab assistant in the population genetics group of Prof. Bruce MacDonald, division of Phytopathology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ).

I grew up both in Switzerland and Syria, where I attended high school and graduated from the ICARDA International School of Aleppo, Syria.