Primary fields of research

• Phylogenomics and tree of life
• Genome evolution and animal adaptation
• Functional genomics on social animals

Short presentation

On the last page of The Origin of Species, Darwin writes that there is grandeur in the view that all of life had a single beginning from which evolved endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful. In the over 150 years that passed, biology has made tremendous progress understanding the pathways and molecular processes behind the diversification of the life forms, and evolution’s fundamental genetic mechanisms that Darwin was unaware of became firmly established via the Neodarwinian synthesis in the first half of the 20th century. The second half of the 20th century added all aspects of social evolution to the Neodarwinian synthesis after W.D. Hamilton developed inclusive fitness theory in the 1960s and 1970s.

In spite of these major developments we continue to know very little about the fundamental molecular processes that produce adapted phenotypes in response to variation in the physical and social environment of organisms. The next generation sequencing revolution that I helped to shape during my years at BGI-Shenzhen have demonstrated this very clearly in that we are now generating reference genomes at a higher rate that we can study how these blueprints translate in responses to natural selection, the adaptations arising from these responses, and the ultimate diversification and speciation processes that may or may not follow.

With a group at BGI and recently as Assistant Professor in the Section for Ecology and Evolution of the Department of Biology in Copenhagen, I have developed and applied comparative genomic tools on high throughput ‘-omics’ data to address the classical questions of diversification, adaptation and speciation across a broad spectrum of organisms. In the past nine years, I have led several big international genomic initiations, the latest one being the Avian Phylogenomics Project, the results of which have been published in a special issue of the journal Science on 12th December 2014, which includes eight papers on bird genomics, and 18 accompanying papers in other journals. I have prominent authorships on four of the Science papers and 10 of the remaining publications.  Before embarking on this bird work I singled out the eusocial animals as my future research focus in my Copenhagen group, and have initiated several comparative genomics and functional genomics projects on eusocial species.

There are three main research themes in my current group. The first one is the phylogenomics, which aims to use full genome data to resolve the fundamental tree of life question. Based on the first themes, my group also uses comparative genomic tools to understand the molecular mechanisms of animal evolution and adaptation. The third theme focuses on the behavior genetics using eusocial insects as model.

CV

Education:     B.Sc. in Biology, Xiamen University (2004)

                        Ph.D. in Comparative Genomics, Kunming Zoology Institute, Chinese Academy of Science, People's Republic of China (2010)

Positions held

2017 Sep - present          Full Professor

2017 March - 2017 Sep.     Associate Professor

2015 – 2017 March            Tenure Track Assistant Professor, Section of Evolution and Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen,

2012-2014                 Assistant Professor, Centre for Social Evolution, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen,

2012 – present            Associate Director of the China National GeneBank, BGI, China

2010 – 2012                Associate Director of the Research Department, BGI, China

2009 – 2010                Associate Director of the Bioinformatics Center, BGI, China

2006 – 2009                Leader of the Comparative Genomic and Evolution group, BGI

Short-term visiting fellowships and stays abroad

2011                            CSIRO, Australia (1 month)

2010                            University of Copenhagen, Denmark (1 month)

Leadership and coordination of large international consortia

• Leader of the Tree of Life Project initiated by BGI, with participation of >100 international groups (2010 – 2011)
• Coordinator of the Genome10K program at BGI for sequencing 100 vertebrate genomes, together with Professor Stephen O’ Brien from NIH, Professor David Haussler from UC Davis, and Professor Oliver Ryder from San Diego Zoo (Since 2010)
• Co-leader of the Avian Phylogenomics Project, together with Professor Thomas Gilbert from the University of Copenhagen and Associate Professor Erich Jarvis from Duke University (Since 2011)
• Committee member of the i5K Consortium, the Cephalopod Genome Consortium, the Genomic Standards Consortium, and the De-extinction Project
• Co-leader of B10K Project to sequence the genomes of all extant birds.

Academic service

• Associate Editor of the 3 Biotech Journal (since 2011) and Human Genomics (since 2012) and Editorial board member of ELS (Encyclopedia of Life Sciences) since 2013
• Peer reviewer for a substantial number of journals (including Nature, Nature series, Science, Genome Research, Current Biology, PLoS Genetics, BMC Genomics) and several grant-giving agencies

Prizes and Awards

2016     Carlsberg Distingushied Associate Professor

2015     Lundbeck Fellowship

2013    Ju-chi Li Animal Genetics Prize (two awards every second year in China)

2012    Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship, European Commission

2011    Sir Frederick McMaster Visiting Fellowship, CSIRO, Australia (nominated by the Director of CSIRO’s Animal Health Laboratory)

2011    Top 100 excellent theses, Chinese Academy of Science (top 100 from 13,000 PhDs)

2010    Leading Talent in Science of Shenzhen city (50 awardees from all fields)