Jennifer Hawkins, Ph.D.

Research Interests:

Plants, by way of their sessile lifestyle, are “masters of phenotypic variation”, comprising one of the most morphologically diverse and dynamic groups of organisms on earth. Dr. Hawkins' research is focused on understanding the underlying molecular evolutionary processes that contribute to this phenotypic diversity, particularly those processes pertaining to genome structure and affecting gene expression. By combining the power of comparative genomics with bioinformatics, Hawkins uses mass data sets from large-scale sequencing projects to elucidate genetic and epigenetic differences among closely related organisms with the primary goal of relating these molecular differences to phenotype. Hawkins Lab