Francisco
Perfectti

Francisco Perfectti is Professor of Genetics at the University of Granada. He received his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences (Genetics) from the University of Granada in 1995 with a Ph.D. thesis on the characterization of the genetic resources of the fruit tree Annona cherimola. In 1995 he moved to the Department of Biology of the University of Rochester (NY, USA) for a postdoctoral stay with Dr. Jack Werren, working on the genetics of speciation in parasitic wasps of the genus Nasonia. He returned as Associate Professor to the University of Granada during the 1997/98 academic year. He was a visiting professor at the University of California - Berkeley during the academic year 2016/17.

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As an evolutionary geneticist, he has developed several interdisciplinary research lines, including both genomic and ecological aspects. His current scientific interests are focused on the genetic bases of phenotypic plasticity and canalization, and in the analysis of the coevolutionary processes at the genomic level (parasite chromosomes, the evolution of repeated DNA) and ecological level (evolutionary biology of the interaction between pollinators and plants), as well as on the speciation process and the genetics of adaptation, using animal and plant models. He is also interested in the role of individual-based networks in population dynamics and evolution.

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He has participated in more than twenty public-funded research projects. His more recent one analyses the genetics of phenotypic plasticity in the plant genus Moricandia. His research work has resulted in >100 contributions to scientific meetings and more than a hundred scientific papers, the vast majority of which have been published in SCI-indexed international journals, such as Nature, Evolution, Genetics, Heredity, Proceedings of The Royal Society, Chromosoma, Ecology Letters, The American Naturalist, Philosophical Transactions, PLoS ONE, Oikos, Annals of Botany, New Phytologist, Molecular Ecology, etc. 

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F. Perfectti teaches Evolutionary Biology at the undergraduate level (Biology Degree) and several courses at the graduate level, including Phylogeography and Molecular Phylogeny, and Creativity, Rigor, and Communication in the Master of Genetics and Evolution. He has participated in 12 Teaching Innovation Projects, two of them awarded, and in several Tutorial Action Plans. He has been recognized with the UGR Award for Scientific Excellence. He has supervised eight Ph.D. students. He is a member of The Society for the Study of Evolution, the Spanish Society of Genetics, and a founding member of the Spanish Society of Evolutionary Biology. He is also a member of the editorial boards of Scientific Reports and BMC Ecology and Evolution.