Rose Ruiz Daniels [Alumni]

Previously Robledo Group, Postdoctoral Research Fellow; Now Lecturer in Aquaculture Genomics at the University of Stirling

Current research

I am a BBSRC core-funded scientist within the Roslin Institute and I am currently developing a range of state-of-the-art functional genomics tools (e.g. ATAC-Seq, ChIP-Seq, scRNA-seq), with a view to understanding genome function, regulation and evolution in salmonids and other aquatic organisms. By trade, I am an evolutionary biologist, which makes salmonids a very interesting model due to their relatively recent genome duplication event, which occurred approximately 88-103 million years ago. Salmonids are still in the process of undergoing rediploidization, making these fish a compelling system to study genome evolution.

Favourite aquaculture species  

Eels - they have very cryptic genomes.

Background

I did my undergraduate degree in Zoology at the University of Manchester. After that I received an Erasmus Mundus scholarship to do a European masters in Applied Ecology which took me to France, Germany and New Zealand (where I worked with parasites and their co-evolution with their host).

I did my PhD under the supervision of Dr Delphine Grivet in the Centre of Forest Research (INIA-CIFOR) in Madrid – titled 'Evolution, Demography and Selection in Conifers' – with most of this work involving the exploration of methodologies for inferring molecular adaptation in different species of conifer. In particular, I focused on untangling the signals of demographic history, random drift and selection at the molecular level in the pine species Pinus Halepensis.

Working with conifers has given me a taste for working with complex genomes and a keen interest in learning more about genome evolution.

• [2006-2009]         BSc (Hons) Zoology, University of Manchester
• [2010-2012]         Erasmus Mundus Masters in Applied Ecology, Specialising in Evolutionary Biology and Symbiosis
• [2013-2017]         PhD Population Genetics, INIA-CIFOR, Madrid
• [2017-2019]         Stay-at-home mum
• [2019-Present]   Postdoctoral Researcher in Integrative Fish Genomics, Roslin Institute.

Interests, hopes and dreams

I am mother of two young children; I am job sharing this position so sometimes I even have time for hobbies. I love evolutionary biology so that is also a hobby. I am an amateur actor and particularly like performing Shakespeare plays outdoors in Scotland (it is like fieldwork).