GENETICS and G3 welcome new editors

GENETICS

Jeff Ross-Ibarra 
GENETICS editor in Primers

Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra is a professor at the University of California, Davis, where he studies evolutionary genomics in maize and its wild relatives. His research explores how selection, demography, and human activity shape genetic diversity, focusing on adaptation, domestication, and genome evolution. Combining computational genomics, field studies, and collaborations across disciplines, Ross-Ibarra investigates questions ranging from the impacts of linked selection to the role of breeding and agriculture in shaping crop genomes. He is widely recognized for bridging population genetics and plant biology to better understand evolution in agricultural systems.

G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics

Yasir Ahmed-Braimah
G3 associate editor

Yasir Ahmed-Braimah is an associate professor in the Department of Biology at Syracuse University. He’s an evolutionary geneticist with broad interests, including speciation, reproductive interactions, chromosome evolution, and population genomics. His lab uses several Drosophila species as models to study reproductive isolation and species divergence, as well as functional genetics studies in the model D. melanogaster. He contributes broadly to functional genomics projects in various collaborations.

Derek Bickhart
G3 associate editor

Derek Bickhart is the team lead of bioinformatics in the Global Research and Development Department of Hendrix Genetics and holds a part-time appointment as an associate professor of computational genomics at Wageningen University. Having 15 years of experience in bioinformatics and genomics, he develops and applies innovative technologies and algorithms to address challenges in agricultural production systems. He has led or contributed to the development of reference genomes and metagenomic datasets for agricultural species and identified genetic variants now used in livestock genetic tests. His research aims to improve agricultural efficiency through predictive models of animal performance built from comprehensive genotype–phenotype and host–microbiome data.

Christina Boucher
G3 associate editor

Christina Boucher is a professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the University of Florida. Her research focuses on developing algorithms and computational methods for large-scale genomic data analysis, with particular emphasis on pangenomics, antimicrobial resistance, sequence analysis, and compressed data structures. Her work spans both human and microbial genomics and combines algorithm development, machine learning, and high-performance computing to address challenges arising from increasingly large and complex genomic datasets. She is an active member of the genomics and bioinformatics communities and contributes to several large interdisciplinary and multi-institutional research collaborations.

Shawn Burgess
G3 associate editor

Shawn Burgess is the deputy scientific director and a senior investigator at the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He received a BA in biology/psychology from Wesleyan University and a PhD in genetics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He did his postdoctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has been an investigator at the NIH ever since. His lab uses genetics and genomics in combination with high-throughput screening to study the process of tissue regeneration in zebrafish, particularly hearing regeneration. He is also interested in comprehensive functional annotation of genomes, encompassing both the coding and non-coding sequences. Burgess is a member of the GSA Board of Directors.

Dario Cantù
G3 associate editor

Dario Cantù is the Ray Rossi endowed chair and professor of viticulture and enology at the University of California, Davis. His research integrates plant genetics, genomics, and computational biology to understand how genetic variation shapes complex traits in grapevine and other perennial crops. His laboratory has pioneered phased diploid genome assembly and graph-based pangenomics, developing genus-wide resources for wild and cultivated Vitis. His work has examined the genomic consequences of domestication, clonal propagation, and hybridization; the genetic architecture of disease resistance; the evolution of reproductive traits; and the genetic basis of berry aroma and microbiome recruitment. More recently, his group has applied single-cell and spatial transcriptomics to plant development and host–pathogen interactions. His laboratory also develops and maintains grapegenomics.com, a leading public resource for grape genomic data and tools.

Kaio Olimpio Dias
G3 associate editor

Kaio Olimpio Dias is an associate professor at the Federal University of Viçosa (UFV) in Brazil, where he works in quantitative and statistical genetics, genomic prediction, genotype-environment interaction, and artificial intelligence applied to plant breeding.

Melania Figueroa
G3 associate editor

Melania Figueroa earned her PhD in plant pathology with an emphasis in genetics and molecular biology at the University of Arizona. She achieved the rank of associate professor at the University of Minnesota before relocating to Canberra, Australia where she is currently a principal research scientist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Throughout her career, Figueroa has been interested in plant-microbe interactions and the evolution of virulence traits that lead to host adaptation. Her research combines genomics, genetics, and molecular and synthetic biology to determine key factors behind crop disease and support the grain industry. Figueroa’s work has been transformative to elucidate nuclear haplotype hybridizations in cereal rust fungi and the identification of fungal effectors. 

Aleeza Gerstein
G3 associate editor

Aleeza Gerstein is an associate professor in the Departments of Microbiology and Statistics at the University of Manitoba. She earned her BSc in ecology and evolution from The University of Western Ontario and completed her MSc and PhD using Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model system to understand evolutionary genetics in Sarah (Sally) Otto’s lab at the University of British Columbia. She was then a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota, where she began applying an evolutionary lens to understanding human fungal pathogens. The Gerstein ‘MicroStats’ Lab currently integrates clinical, experimental, genomic, and computational statistical approaches to understand the factors that influence how fungal populations evolve, with a particular focus on recurrent infections in the human body and the acquisition of drug resistance. She is a past CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar in the Fungal Kingdom: Threats and Opportunities program.

Alex Harkess
G3 associate editor

Alex Harkess is an evolutionary biologist who uses high-throughput genomics to understand the development and function underlying reproduction. He received an NSF CAREER award to build chromosome-scale genome assemblies of diverse XY, ZW, and UV sex chromosomes across land plants, and to identify putative sex-determining genes that can be translated into use for agricultural breeding. He co-founded and built the American Campus Tree Genomes (ACTG) program, which sequences iconic college campus trees, and builds semester curricula for students to assemble, annotate, and publish those chromosome-scale genomes in G3. He is currently a faculty investigator at HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology since 2020, as well as a co-founder of Veil Genomics.

Tosso Leeb
G3 associate editor

Tosso Leeb received a diploma in chemistry and a doctorate in biochemistry from the University of Munich. He did postdoctoral research at the University of Göttingen and the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. In 1999, he was appointed professor for molecular veterinary genetics at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover. Since 2005 he has been professor for veterinary genetics and animal breeding at the University of Bern. His research interest focuses on the identification of genetic variants that control heritable variation. His group has identified more than 100 causal genetic variants for Mendelian traits in domestic animals with a particular emphasis on coat color and inherited disorders of the skin. Tosso works in several species including dogs, cats, horses, goats, and cattle. He is active in global collaboration projects such as the International Horse Genome Project, dog10K, 99 Lives Cat Genome Sequencing, and the Ruminant T2T Consortium.

Amelia Lindsey
G3 associate editor

Amelia Lindsey is an associate professor at the University of Minnesota (UMN). She completed a PhD in entomology under the mentorship of Richard Stouthamer at the University of California, Riverside, and was a postdoctoral researcher with Irene Newton and Richard Hardy at Indiana University prior to starting at UMN in 2020. Her research is focused on understanding transitions in reproductive biology, and the symbionts that interact with and drive such changes. Her lab uses a range of insect models in combination with genetics, genomics, and cell biology to address questions about these processes. A major focus in the lab is the Wolbachia symbionts that convert certain insects to asexual reproduction.

Adrian Moore
G3 associate editor

Adrian Moore is team director of the Laboratory for Neurodiversity at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science in Japan and an adjunct faculty member at Kyoto University. His research examines the regulatory mechanisms that govern neuronal differentiation and morphogenesis, with particular interests in microtubule organization, dendritic development, and the generation of neuronal diversity. His laboratory combines Drosophila genetics, mouse models, human neural stem-cell and neuronal cultures, live imaging, and quantitative image analysis to investigate fundamental mechanisms underlying nervous-system form and function.

Jesse Raab
G3 associate editor

Jesse Raab is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research investigates how chromatin remodeling complexes are regulated and how that regulation shapes gene expression in normal and disease states, working primarily on the SWI/SNF family, combining quantitative genomics, biochemistry, and computational analysis. Raab’s current program is focused on how post-translational modifications on SWI/SNF subunits control complex assembly and activity, and how interactions between chromatin remodelers and RNA contribute to regulated gene expression.

Daniel Skelly
G3 associate editor

Daniel Skelly is a geneticist, computational biologist, and senior computational scientist at The Jackson Laboratory. His research focuses on understanding the genetic architecture of complex traits and disease through the integration of systems genetics, functional genomics, and single-cell technologies. Leveraging genetically diverse mouse populations and large-scale genomic datasets, he seeks to uncover how genetic variation influences cellular phenotypes, disease mechanisms, and therapeutic responses. Through interdisciplinary collaborations spanning experimental and computational biology, his work addresses problems in immunology, cancer, and precision medicine.