Bayona Vásquez Lab
Conservation & Environmental Genomics

I was born in a small town in Colombia. When I was a little kid, my parents introduced me to the love of nature and the outdoors. Then, when I was 12, I snorkeled for the first time, and I was fascinated by underwater creatures, their forms, and their interactions. Since then, I have known I wanted to study the natural sciences.

 

In 2003, I went to college to study Biology at Universidad Nacional de Colombia. During my junior year, I became interested in genetics, evolution, and molecular ecology. I started working on a project in the Conservation Genetics Lab on the population genetics of Crocodylus acutus, and then, in the same lab, I did my honors thesis on the population genetics of Plagioscion magdalenae, an endemic freshwater fish in Colombia. I was mentored by the amazing Professor MSc. Consuelo Burbano.

 

In 2009, I moved to Mexico to pursue a master's and then a doctoral degree at UNAM. I became interested in widely distributed and commercially important marine fish, a field that has since captivated me. During my academic training, I also became curious about molecular techniques. I have witnessed the tremendous advances in genomic technologies and bioinformatics resources in the last two decades. The rapid advances in the field motivate me to explore new analysis methods and tools and consider how to apply them in my research.

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I worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Travis Glenn's lab at the University of Georgia. There, I had a lot of fun developing and using genomic methods across a wide array of organisms, with an emphasis on species of conservation and environmental relevance.

 

Now, as an Associate Professor, I lead a research lab at Oxford College of Emory University, powered by amazing first- and second-year college students. There, we work on molecular ecology, from kinship relationships to community interactions, covering population genetics and phylogeography across species ranging from bacteria and fungi to insects and large vertebrates, all using high-throughput genomic data.