Antonis Rokas

The National Center for Science Education has named Vanderbilt University’s Evolutionary Studies Initiative as one of its 2025 recipients of the prestigious Friend of Darwin award. This national honor recognizes ESI’s outstanding contributions to advan... Read More

Embarking on a new research project often brings unexpected discoveries—some intriguing, some novel, but rarely a find of a lifetime. Such a remarkable discovery occurred when university archivist and associate director Kathy Smith stumbled upon a pile... Read More

Research projects investigating the history of evolution at Vanderbilt University led to the rediscovery of a long-lost Crampton’s Plesiosaur Cast from the 1870s. Read More

A mere decade ago, decoding the genome of every organism in a major branch of the tree of life and deciphering their diets was a pipe dream. In a groundbreaking study, a team of researchers from Vanderbilt University, the University of Wisconsin-Madiso... Read More

Beckman Scholar Charu Balamurugan, an undergraduate researcher in the Rokas lab at Vanderbilt University, has shed light on the intricate evolutionary patterns governing secondary metabolite biosynthesis in fungi. Balamurugan delved deep into the genom... Read More

Kyle David, an NSF postdoctoral fellow in the Rokas lab, and co-authors published a new paper, “Saccharomycotina yeasts defy longstanding macroecological patterns” in the high-impact journal PNAS. This paper, which looks at the ecology of 186 species o... Read More

Kyle David, an NSF postdoctoral fellow in the Rokas lab, and co-authors published a new paper, 'Saccharomycotina yeasts defy longstanding macroecological patterns' in the high-impact journal PNAS. This paper, which looks at the ecology of 186 species o... Read More

Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Biological Sciences Antonis Rokas in his lab. (John Russell/Vanderbilt University) Antonis Rokas, Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Biological Sciences, has been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The lifetime honor, first awarded… Read More

Jacob Steenwyk (Vanderbilt University) It’s no surprise that Jacob Steenwyk became interested in art at a young age. Both his parents are artists: his father served as art director for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and his mother was a recognized art critic who has published in… Read More