Nicolas Arning
DPhil Student
Nick completed his BSc and MSc in Biological Sciences within the Special Study Program Evolution at the Westfalische Wilhelms-Universitat Munster before starting his D. Phil at the Interdisciplinary Bioscience Doctoral Training Centre in 2017.
His DPhil is in the field of paleogenetics: making use of the ancient genetic material of bacteria. Through sequence composition approaches, bayesian statistics and with the help of machine learning, he aims to model the complete trajectory of bacterial evolution. The history of co-evolution of bacteria and humans, as well as accurate estimations of evolutionary rates, should thus be made accessible for the first time. Insights gained should contribute towards explaining the phenomenon of time dependence of evolutionary rates in bacteria.