Affiliation: City University of New York, Queens College

Sebastian Alvarado worked in the private biotechnology sector for three years before undertaking graduate training at McGill University. He received his PhD from the department of pharmacology where his dissertation research focused on the epigenetic signatures that accompany chronic pain and metastasis in breast cancer cell lines. After receiving his PhD in 2013, he was awarded an A.P. Giannini postdoctoral fellowship to pursue training at Stanford University where he adopted a cichlid fish model system, Astatotilapia burtoni. In 2018, he became an assistant professor at Queens College at the City University of New York in the department of biology. His research program is fundamentally interested in how plastic molecular substrates can shape a genome to dynamic changes in the environment. Currently, he has adopted diverse model systems (Fall Army Worms, Snowshoe Hare, Cichlids, etc) to address this question with a focus on DNA methylation and its ability to regulate behavior, pigmentation, and the intersection between these areas.