Rita Graze

G3 Associate Editor

Rita Graze is an Associate Professor in Biology at Auburn University. Her formative undergraduate studies and research in evolutionary genetics were carried out at the beautiful red wood covered campus of University of California, Santa Cruz. She earned her PhD in Genetics from the University of California, Davis, studying regulatory evolution and sexually dimorphic complex traits. She later completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Florida, expanding her technical and analytical genomic toolkit. Her research focuses on the evolutionary and functional genomics of sex dimorphism in Drosophila. She uses Drosophila as a model and employs transgenic and genomic experimental approaches, integrating statistical and bioinformatic analyses. She is dedicated to supporting the community of scientists working on questions related to biological sex both in model and developing model systems, and has been involved in organizing workshops and sessions in this area for many years, focusing on providing opportunities for junior scientists. She also contributes to multiple programs that provide educational experiences, training and research opportunities to students at the graduate, undergraduate and K-12 levels with an emphasis on computational biology, evolution, and genetics, expanding how science is disseminated to the broader community.

Eric Haag

G3 Associate Editor

Eric Haag is an evolutionary developmental biologist and Professor of Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD). He earned a BA in Biology (and another in music) from Oberlin College, and a PhD from Indiana University, Bloomington. His graduate work with evo-devo pioneer Rudolf Raff identified gene expression changes associated with the evolution of direct development in Heliocidaris sea urchins. As a Jane Coffin Childs postdoc with Judith Kimble at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he examined another recently evolved reproductive strategy, the self-fertility of C. elegans and other Caenorhabditis nematodes. This work is the center of his lab at UMD, and has employed forward and reverse genetic analysis of sexual development and gamete function in multiple species, along with aspects of populations genetics and comparative genomics. Administratively, he has served as Director of UMD’s Biological Sciences Graduate Program since 2020. In late 2024 he published a book on the deep evolutionary history of sexual reproduction for the curious public, The Other Big Bang (Columbia University Press).

Arun Sethuraman

G3 Senior Editor

Arun Sethuraman is a theoretical and applied population geneticist who develops new statistical methods, software, and pipelines for estimating evolutionary history from large population genomic data. His lab at San Diego State University is specifically interested in the genomics of structured populations, with ongoing methodological developments to estimate population structure in the presence of missing genomic data, signatures of linked natural selection versus adaptive introgression, archaic introgression, and relatedness in admixed/inbred populations. 

Methods his lab has recently developed include PPP, SpecKs, DemographiKs, InRelate, IMa2p, CoalMiner, and methylMapR. His lab is currently also working on several applied genomics projects to study the evolutionary history of domestication in hops (Humulus lupulus L.), the genomics of invasiveness in introduced beneficial insects (e.g. Coccinellid beetles) and agricultural pests (e.g. pink stem borer moths), the evolution of modern human genomes in the face of “ghost” hybridization, and estimating evolutionary demographic history along the polyploidy continuum. His lab has been supported by the NSF (CAREER-2021, ABI-2016, REU-2018), USDA-NIFA (REEU-2017, HSI-2022), US-DOE (2025), and NIH (R15-2022).

Verena Jantsch

GENETICS Senior Editor

Verena Jantsch-Plunger studied Biochemistry at the University of Vienna. She conducted her diploma and PhD work at the Carnegie Institution of Washington under the supervision of Andrew Fire, and earned her PhD in 1993 at the University of Vienna. She was awarded the prestigious Berta Karlik Professorship at the University of Vienna in 2012 and since 2017 and is currently a Professor of Eukaryote Genetics at the University of Vienna.

She has a longstanding interest in understanding mechanisms of cell division and chromosome segregation. With her coworkers, she aims to decipher processes that contribute to accurate chromosome segregation during the meiotic cell division program, excellent forward and reverse genetics, easy cytological observation of all meiotic stages, and the transparency of the animal make the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans an excellent model system to study.

Anne-Ruxandra Carvunis from the University of Pittsburgh & ETH Zurich, Athma Pai from UMass Chan Medical School, Worcester  

Leopold Parts from Wellcome Sanger Institute, and Hinxton  

Michael Brent from Washington University in St. Louis will be joining as Associate Editors later this year (and next). 

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