Dave Des Marais

Nice article by Zach Winn on our work today in MIT News. Thanks to the fantastic Jake Belcher for photography! news.mit.edu/2026/explori...

@haorancai.bsky.social @kgslab.bsky.social & @evodaveo.bsky.social show that genetic correlations are more environmentally stable when driven by polygenic background correlation across many loci, vs. a few large-effect pleiotropic outliers 🔗 academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... #societyjournal #evobio

news.mit.edu/2026/tenured...

🚨 New Paper 🚨 Thrilled to share new work with @evodaveo.bsky.social eo.bsky.social! We dive into the evolution of gene duplicates and demonstrate how expression variability might contribute to retention following duplication. Read the full article here: academic.oup.com/gbe/article/...

I'm thrilled to share that I've been promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT. @mitcee.bsky.social @mit.edu

Overheard just now in the hallway, as students left my class: “One of the fun things about taking classes with grad students is that everyone dresses really nicely”

Super inspiring profile of a great student. I'm proud to have taught and worked with Ananda over the past two years. news.mit.edu/2025/shaping...

Congrats to Meghan Blumstein and Sophie Webster for this great study on exploiting genomics to better understand the effect of urban heat islands on tree phenology! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

MIT's Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab is searching for a new (non-faculty) Executive Director. This is a great opportunity to connect MIT PIs and stakeholders around the world. careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/cl...

Cologne Spring Meeting continues with “Resurrecting plants for climate change research” by Niek Scheepens from @unituebingen.bsky.social Innovating plant resurrection techniques to study climate adaptation. #ClimateChange #PlantResurrection #TRR341 #DFG

I really enjoyed presentation by @seemasheth.bsky.social at the Cologne Spring Meeting. Absolutely heroic field work addressing local adaptation with a great model system

New preprint from the lab! PhD student Jie Yun developed a nice computational pipeline to test long-standing hypotheses about life history trade-offs associated with domestication. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Congratulations to Dr. Haoran Cai!!! @haorancai.bsky.social successfully defended his thesis earlier today in MIT CEE and is moving to UCLA to begin a post-doc.

My department, Plant and Microbial Biology at the University of Minnesota is looking for a new head and colleague in any area of Plant and/or Microbial Biology. Job ad: hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/365... So please spread the word to anyone who might be interested. Thank you 😁

Very sad to hear of the passing of Joanne Chory, who was an iconic scientist and person. Truly, one can say she spent her whole career trying to make a better planet and a better environment in science for all. Interview: www.sebiology.org/resource/in-... TED talk: www.ted.com/speakers/joa...

So excited to announce our department is hiring a tenure track position in Forest Ecophysiology! Happy to answer any questions about the position!! Join us in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management at Penn State! psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/PSU_Ac...

My department at MIT has a joint search with the College of Computing in computation for environmental life sciences. Please apply, and pass along! faculty-searches.mit.edu/cee-scc/

Every picture in the CSHL bar

New postdocs fellowship at MIT for folks interested in applications of AI. Fellows will have advisors in both AI and a discipline. Please reach out if interested in applying cutting edge AI to the microbiome or microbial evolution! computing.mit.edu/tayebati-pos...

I am currently searching for a new postdoc to conduct research using amazing data sets that we have accumulated over years through research on a continental-scale array of field experiments with switchgrass genetic mapping/GWAS populations. careers.msu.edu/en-us/job/52...

Thrilled to share my recent perspective piece with @diogromelo.bsky.social and @evodaveo.bsky.social on the empirical measurement of developmental bias in a GP map and its conceptual links with other quant gen variational properties. www.cell.com/trends/genet...

We're looking for two Asst Profs, one with @MIT_SCC on computation and environmental life sciences. Join Otto Cordero, Tami Lieberman, Cesar TerrerDarcy McRose, Serguei Saavedra and I to expand our impact in this essential area. Please apply! faculty-searches.mit.edu/cee-scc/

Attending #Evol2024? Got a good plant biology story to tell? Come join New Phytologist associate editors Robin Hopkins and me to learn about publishing at New Phytologist. Palais d Congres 445B Saturday at 12:30. Journal swag and light fare provided!

Phenomenal work from Jia-Wei Wang’s lab provides a comprehensive view of the mechanisms underlying different degrees of perenniality in different Brassicaceae #plantscience www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

Thanks to TILclimate Podcast for including me in a great episode about the CO2 fertilization effect! climate.mit.edu/podcasts/e1-...

It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for…registration for the 3rd Joint Congress on Evolutionary Biology is open! We hope that you will join us! #Evol2024 @sse-evolution.bsky.social @asn-amnat.bsky.social @eseb.bsky.social

Nice work from my (non-BlueSky) colleague Charlie Harvey on a very important terrestrial carbon sink. Cool combination of field data, remote sensing, and modeling www.nature.com/articles/s41...