About Me
I am interested in how natural selection has shaped how organisms respond to their environment (gene-by-environment interactions). How have the responses evolved? What are the underlying regulatory mechanisms and causal genetic variants? Which changes are adaptive? My research addresses these questions in the context of how humans and other primates respond to infectious diseases. However, I am broadly interested in the evolution of complex traits and gene-by-environment interactions across the tree of life. 

I opened the Evolutionary Immunogenomics Lab at the University of Georgia in January 2026, when I am an assistant professor in the Department of Genetics. I was previously a NIH K99 Fellow at the University of Chicago, where my work with Luis Barreiro explores how European populations adapted to Yersinia pestis during the Black Death. I received my PhD in Evolutionary Anthropology from Duke University where I worked with Jenny Tung on primate gene regulatory evolution.

​​Contact Me
Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
Twitter & Bluesky: @TaurVil