People

Brandon Gaut – Principal Investigator 

Brandon has been a faculty member at UCI since 1998, after being an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University, a postdoc at North Carolina State University and a graduate student at UC Riverside.  When not working, he is usually trying to take advantage of the SoCal weather by pursuing some sort of outdoor activity, like biking or surfing.


Abraham Morales-Cruz – Postdoc

Abraham obtained his B.S. in the Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica and received his Ph.D. at UC Davis. During his Ph.D. he worked at the Department of Viticulture and Enology in Dario Cantu’s lab and studied comparative genomics of grapevine trunk diseases. Abraham did his first Postdoc in the Cantu lab working on genomics of the cacao black pod pathogens. He joined the Gaut lab in August of 2019 and is currently working in population genomics of North American wild grapes. Abraham is interested in the genome evolution of plants and pathogens.


Aline Muyle – Postdoc

Aline has been in the lab since November 2017.  She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Lyon where she also received two years of post-doctoral training under Gabriel Marais.  Aline has successfully competed for postdoctoral fellowships from the L’Oreal Foundation fellowship, EMBO and Human Frontiers. Her primary expertise is in bioinformatics and the evolution of sex chromosomes.


Jonas Aguirre – Postdoc

Jonás received his Ph.D. and did a one year postdoc at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México under the supervision of Dr. Luis Eguiarte. Jonás has studied the genomics of population and local adaptation of wild maize, the teosintes. Lately, Jonás has been interested in understanding the importance of local adaptation in the response of populations to climate change. He is currently funded by UC-Mexus- CONACYT.


Edwin Solares – Ph.D. Student

Edwin joined the lab in 2017 as a Ph.D. student.  Edwin earned his undergraduate degree from UC Irvine, where he studied computer science.  His main interests are genome assembly, structural variants and domestication.  He is currently funded by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.


Tiffany Batarseh – Ph.D. Student

Tiffany joined the lab in 2018 after earning her degree in Biology from UCI.  She has substantial expertise in microbial genetics, and she is is chiefly interested in the evolution of microbial systems. She is currently funded by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.


Galen Martin – Graduate Student

After graduating from Warren Wilson College with a B.S. in Biology and Chemistry, Galen joined the lab in 2018. Galen is primarily interested in crop domestication, DNA methylation, and experimental evolution, and he is currently studying DNA methylation in maize.


Skylar Wyant – Graduate Student


Skylar joined the lab as a graduate student in 2019, after earning her degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Skylar is primarily interested in the genetics of crop domestication, experimental evolution, and population genetics.


Rebecca Gaut – Lab Manager

After working in the biotech industry for several years, Becky made the unfortunate decision to marry a budding academic. Since then, she’s worked in research labs at several universities, most recently in the lab of her husband.  That’s right – Becky has tolerated Brandon both in the lab for 20+ years and at home for 30!  In the lab, she does everything molecular, from high throughput library prep, to BSseq, to vector construction and beyond.