Elisa Visher

Elisa is an NSF and PRISM-Baker Postdoctoral Research Fellow jointly advised by Gavin Sherlock and Dmitri Petrov (2022-now). Their research primarily focuses on using experimental evolution methods to better understand how trade-offs scale from genetics into population level ecological and evolutionary dynamics. 

Elisa finished their PhD in Integrative Biology with Prof Mike Boots at University of California, Berkeley in 2022 where they studied trade-offs between hosts and pathogens using eco-evolutionary frameworks. They used experimental evolution methods in a moth and baculovirus system to understand how trade-offs in host resistance to infection and in virus adaptation to different host genotypes interacted with other ecological factors like resource level and spatial structure. During their postdoc, they are focused on understanding patterns of conditionality in trade-offs by using the barcoded yeast system and a co-evolutionary lineage tracking bacteria and phage system to understand how Pareto front frameworks may explain these patterns.