Erika R. Moore-Pollard, PhD
(she/her)

I recently started an NSF-funded postdoc position at the University of Connecticut that will investigate functional trait tradeoffs and photosynthesis metabolism in bromeliads.

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I am also actively working on a collaborative NSF-funded project that  integrates comparative genomic and transcriptomic approaches with evolutionary and functional analyses to decipher the molecular basis of the sunflower inflorescence across Asterales, Dipsacales, and Apiales.

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For my PhD, I studied a genus in the sunflower family, Packera, that is complicated by polyploidy, hybridization, and introgression, allowing me to ask questions related to biological processes and phylogeny construction.

 

I am involved in many more projects, ranging from the conservation genetics of the endangered sunflower species, Helianthus verticillatus, phylogenomics and systematics of North American Astereae, developing methods to generate long-read, target-enrichment sequencing data from Oxford Nanopore technologies (MinION), plus much more!

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More information on the larger projects can be found in my Research tab!