Principal Investigator
Marc Tollis, PhD City University of New York (2013)
Assistant Professor
School of Informatics, Computing and Cyber Systems, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff AZ
I grew up in New York City and found passion in both music and science, playing percussion and trumpet in high school bands while also volunteering at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), where I worked for many years. I eventually earned my BS in Music Education from New York University. I was inspired to go to graduate school for Evolutionary Biology, and AMNH supported my post-baccalaureate study at Queens College (CUNY). I earned my Ph.D. at CUNY working with Stéphane Boissinot at Queens College, studying phylogeography and genome evolution in the green anole Anolis carolinensis. This research included herpetological field work in nine U.S. states. For my postdoctoral training at Arizona State University, I focused on bioinformatics, developing evolutionary genomics tools for reptiles with Kenro Kusumi and cancer evolution with Carlo Maley. Since 2018, the Vertebrate Origins lab at Northern Arizona University has been focused on the evolution of genomes and species, disease defenses, and cancer suppression. One goal of the lab to maintain a productive and positive environment for students in research.
While we are interested in all vertebrates, there is a soft spot for reptiles in the lab :-)
Postdocs and Graduate Students
Current
Vahid Nikoonejad Fard, Ph.D. student in Informatics, NAU
Vahid has a Masters degree in Animal Genetics from the University of Tehran and started in the lab in 2021. He is researching comparative genomics of cancer resistance across vertebrates.
John Neddermeyer, Ph.D. (2024) Biology, NAU, postdoc in comparative genomics
Dr. Neddermeyer will start in the lab in December 2024 and will be primarily responsible for comparative genomics methods and developing the tools with our collaborators to coestimate rates of genomic and phenotypic evolution for our NSF-funded squamate project.
Former POSTDOCs/GRADUATE STUDENTs
Simone Gable, Ph.D. Informatics, NAU (2024)
Dr. Gable defended her dissertation on phylogenomics and genome evoluton in reptiles in July 2024 and is currently a postdoc for the Earth Biogenome Project at Arizona State University. We miss her but we still work a lot with her!
Daniel Chavez, PhD (UCLA), former postdoc (2021-2023)
Daniel has expertise in genome sequencing, assembly, bioinformatics, and evolutionary genetics and worked with us on the comparative genomics projects of the Arizona Cancer Evolution Center. He is now a professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (PUCE). We still work extensively with Daniel on multiple comparative oncology projects.
Jolten Larremore, MS (2021) Informatics, NAU
During his masters degree, Jolten studied the molecular evolution of tumor suppressor genes as well as helped start a project we call “The Blubber Project”, looking at cholesterol pathway genes and genes involved in human cardiovascular disease across marine mammals.
Undergraduate Students
CURRENT
Sienna Hatfield (NAU class of 2025)
Sienna is a biology major with a minor in environmental studies. She joined the lab for the 2024-2025 academic year and is working on a funded project that will identify genomic variation which predicts phenotypic and ecological variation in amphibians, including resistance to climate change and disease.
Lab alumni
Asterisk indicates student was funded by Interns 2 Scholar,s double asterisk indicates competitive NAU research awards.
Rebecca Chavez** (BS Informatics), graduated 5/2024
Nicholas Bushroe** (BS Microbiology, minor in Informatics), graduated 5/2024
Emma Kozel* (BS Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UCERT in Wildlife Management), transferred to Oregon State in 2024
Jasmine Mendez** (BS Biology,), graduated 5/2023
Adam Wilson**
Adam majored in Mathematics and Biomedical Sciencea with a minor in Philosophy at NAU. He is currently researching transposable element evolution across squamates, using bioinformatics analysis tools and software. In his free time, he likes to read fantasy novels about dragons and practice adventure photography. Adam transferred to Johns Hopkins University after the 2022 academic year.
Alyssa Santos
Dakotah Gerlach
Joshua Wingert
Payton Smith**
We Want People! Join the Tollis Lab @ NAU
We are actively recruiting students to conduct research in the lab. Projects range from elephant and whale population genomics, transposable element evolution, cancer evolution, and molecular evolution in reptiles. These projects offer an opportunity to better understand biodiversity and the origins of human disease, and training in valuable skills in bioinformatics and high-throughput next-generation sequence data analysis for careers in many sectors.
Undergraduate students can pursue a B.S. in Informatics with a bioinformatics emphasis. Graduate students would join the Ph.D. program in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems or the M.S. Program in Informatics and earn a valuable degree in informatics while focusing on bioinformatics and molecular evolution in the lab. Our school includes distinguished faculty in eco- and environmental informatics as well as health and bioinformatics.
Come live and work here! Flagstaff, AZ has been rated one of the happiest cities in America, with four seasons, year-round recreation, terrific college vibe, and a laid-back attitude. We are close to the Phoenix metropolitan area, but even closer to Sedona and the Grand Canyon, and are surrounded by mountainous national forest.
If interested, email Dr. Marc Tollis at marc.tollis@nau.edu.
JOIN THE LAB
If you would like to join the lab, fill out the form below and we will get back to you.