Michael Cummings

Associate Professor

Dr. Cummings studies the patterns and processes of evolution, particularly at the molecular level. More specifically, a majority of his work has focused on methodology and application of phylogenetics, the inference of evolutionary relationships among genes, species, and other entities whose history can be represented as a genealogical tree. He contributes to the development and testing of phylogenetic computational methods, and to expanding the application of these methods to promote the understanding of the origins of molecular and phenotypic aspects of biological diversity. He also directs the Workshop on Molecular Evolution and the Workshop on Comparative Genomics, advanced courses held in North America and Europe.