Young Investigator Grant

This is a bittersweet post for me to write, but let’s start with the good news first: I was recently awarded a Young Investigator Grant from FAPESP! For the next 5 years, I will try to uncover causal relationships in the macroevolutionary dynamics of different systems, along with further expanding some of my past research combining macroevolution and ecological networks. I am very excited about it, but also terrified: “switching sides” from mentee to mentor scares me, but I hope I will do a good job. Also, I will need to come up with a name for my group/lab, so suggestions are welcome! Bonus points for names that work in both Portuguese and English.

The sad part of this story is that I will have to leave the University of Gothenburg sooner than I wanted. I admit it is a good type of problem to have, but I enjoyed so much my time there that I wish I could still stay for a few more months. Anyway, I made many new friends and started interesting and important collaborations, so I am sure I will be back in the near future, this time as a guest though.

Anyway, keep your eyes open because I will announce the openings for the positions to work with me in the coming months. I expect to hire 2 undergrad students, 2 Masters students and 1 PhD student for the duration of the project, and maybe even more if there’s interest. So, if you fancy working with causal approaches in macroevolution, drop me a line so we can talk more! You can find my poster presented at the II meeting of the Brazilian Society for Evolutionary Biology in July/2026 with some very broad description of the general idea behind my project.