Hajibabaei Lab

Mehrdad Hajibabaei, PhD

Assistant Professor
Biodiversity Institute of Ontario
Department of Integrative Biology


I use molecular biology, genomics and bioinformatics to study evolutionary relationships and to understand species diversity in different domains of life. During my PhD at the university of Ottawa, I studied the molecular evolution of RNA Polymerase genes and used their sequence information–in combination with several other loci–to address a long-standing evolutionary question: seed plant phylogeny and the position of Gnetales. During my postdoctoral research at Guelph, I focused on development and application of DNA barcoding, a global DNA-based species identification system. I applied DNA barcoding to a well-studied species-rich tropical fauna of the Lepidoptera of Costa Rica. I also worked on establishing high-throughput workflows for barcoding as well as recovery of DNA barcodes from archival specimens. As an Assistant Professor, based at Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, I continue my research on various aspects of molecular biodiversity analysis from theoretical work to technology development and bioinformatics. I also serve as the Associate Director of the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding, based at Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, and as Associate Editor for the journal BMC Ecology.


Education
B.Sc. - Tehran (1994)
Ph.D. - Ottawa (2003)

Download a copy of my CV here.