Sophie Tandonnet

University of Barcelona

Dr. Sophie Tandonnet is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow in Isabel Almudi’s laboratory at the University of Barcelona, Spain, where she studies the brain remodeling that accompanies the transition from aquatic to aerial life in a mayfly species, as well as the mechanisms underlying sex determination and differentiation. She received her PhD in life sciences from the University of Warwick, UK, in 2019 under the supervision of André Pires da Silva and later conducted postdoctoral research at the University of São Paulo, Brazil.Dr. Tandonnet investigates the biology of non-model organisms, integrating bioinformatics with experimental approaches to understand how molecular, developmental, and evolutionary processes shape biological diversity. Her work focuses on the mechanisms governing sex determination, the genetic basis of complex traits, and the evolution of genome architecture. She is committed to advancing research on understudied species and contributes to collaborative, interdisciplinary projects across diverse taxa.

Rafath Chowdhury

Department of Genetics, University of Barcelona

Dr. Rafath Chowdhury is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Genetics at the University of Barcelona (UB), Spain. He earned his PhD in 2021 from the Integrative Biology of Marine Organisms unit (BIOM, CNRS/Sorbonne University, France), where he studied the development of the ventral peripheral nervous system through comparative analyses of two unconventional marine model organisms: the ascidian Phallusia mammillata and the amphioxus Branchiostoma lanceolatum. He later broadened his research to another emerging non-model species, the mayfly Cloeon dipterum, joining Dr. Isabel Almudi’s group at the UB. His current work leverages the mayfly’s key phylogenetic position to explore the evolutionary origin of insect wings.