Peter is a second year PhD candidate in our group. He completed his B.Sc. Hons degree in Genetics and Cell Biology in Dublin City University in 2016. Peter’s PhD project is co-supervised by Dr Ian Carr at the University of Leeds and St James’s University Hospital and is funded by a University of Leeds Biological Science Scholarship. Peter is interested in resolving outstanding branching order issues in our current understanding of animal phylogeny. Peter will employ sophisticated heterogeneous models for phylogeny reconstruction in conjunction with large molecular sequence datasets to determine if greater resolution can be achieved for the animal tree of life.

Before joining the group Peter undertook 6 months’ placement in the medical diagnostics company MedLab Pathology, which was established as Sonic Healthcare’s Irish laboratory facility and he also worked in the lab of Dr Tim Downing for his final year research thesis. In his final year research project Peter analysed and corrected errors present in the assembled genome of the protozoan parasite Leishmania adleri. Peter’s contribution to this work has resulted in the following publication :

https://www.nature.com/articles/srep43747?WT.feed_name=subjects_biological-sciences