Joseph P. Bielawski

I am a computational biologist trained in evolutionary genetics, and I use probabilistic modeling to investigate functional divergence within complex biological systems. I am cross-appointed at Dalhousie University in the Departments of Biology and Mathematics & Statistics. I supervise an inter-disciplinary research program with graduate students in both Biology and Statistics. My research exploits the simultaneous pursuit of biological questions and modeling advancements. I have traditionally worked in the area modeling and inference of functional divergence at the gene and genome level. More recent work involves the development of new models and methods to study multi-level processes in the context of explicit changes in organism phenotype. We have developed new models of the joint analysis of gene and phenotype evolutionary dynamics along a phylogenetic tree. We have also developed new process models to explore multi-level selection theory (MLST) in the context of gene – species – community level selective pressures.