Dr. Vaishal Katju's Public Outreach
to K–12 on "The Case for Evolution"

Dr. Vaishai Katju will be giving two lectures at the Albuquerque Academy High School in November. She will present evidence for the central role of evolution in explaining biological processes and biodiversity as it exists today, by exploring the history of life on the planet, the mechanisms of evolution, and how scientists study evolution.

The Wednesday, November 16, 2011 lecture is open to the public as part of the Albuquerque Academy Community Lecture Series.
The other lecture will be given to the student body.

Dr. Vaishali Katju received a bachelor's degree in ecology and evolutionary sciences from the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY in 1993. She conducted her graduate research at the University of Oregon and Indiana University-Bloomington, receiving her Ph.D. in evolutionary genetics and genomics from Indiana University in 2004. She joined the Department of Biology at The University of New Mexico as an assistant professor in 2007. Dr. Katju uses molecular and bioinformatic tools to study fundamental evolutionary processes at the level of populations, both experimental and natural, and genomes. Her research interests include a wide range of topics including the origin of new genes by gene duplication, the genetic basis of speciation and the role of different classes of mutations in evolution.