Dr Yoav Ram is joining our School of Zoology
Dr Yoav Ram is a theoretical and computational biologist who engages with evolution, ecology and cultural evolution.
Academic qualifications:
I completed my undergraduate studies with a double major (biology and mathematics) at Tel Aviv University. I then continued to a doctorate in the direct PhD track at the Faculty of Life Sciences, under the supervision of Prof. Lilach Hadani. My doctoral dissertation engages with the evolution of the mutation rate. The research focuses on the evolutionary causes and consequences of stress-induced mutation and was carried out via the development and analyses of mathematical and computational models. Towards the end of my doctoral studies I led a research project that combined models and experiments and dealt with predicting common/shared growth/breeding in microbes.
I continued to a post-doctoral position at Stanford University, California, under the supervision of Prof. Mark Feldman, and supported by the CEHG, the Center for Evolutionary, Computational, and Human Genomics. During this period I was exposed to the field of cultural evolution – the use of evolutionary models in order to understand the changes in cultural traits, such as in technology, language, customs, beliefs, and ideas. I focused on the evolution of social learning, in particular on the learning of youngsters from adults that are not their parents, as this learning process significantly differs from that of learning from parents.
My laboratory
Following my post-doctoral studies, I joined the School of Computer Sciences at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzlia as a senior lecturer and established a research lab there. Currently, two years later, I am transferring to the School of Zoology at Tel Aviv University.
In my lab we engage with population biology – evolution, ecology, social behavior, cultural evolution, and even infectious diseases. The research in my “dry” lab is aided by mathematical, computational and statistical models, in cooperation with “wet” biologists. The main fields of research in the lab are: competition and cooperation; establishment and inheritance of genetic, phenotypic, and cultural difference; statistical inferences derived from data, e.g., from evolutionary experiments; the interface between machine learning and deep learning and between evolution and ecology.
My email: yoavram@tauex.tau.ac.il
Sherman Building, Room 328
