I am an evolutionary and computational biologist, fascinated by the interplay of genes, environment, and time. My research in temporal genomics, adaptation, phylogeography, and selection seeks to understand how organisms respond to environmental change—how Darwin’s insight into “descent with modification” unfolds in real populations. Much of my work involves decoding genomes across time, tracing the signatures of survival and loss, and unravelling the mysteries of hybridisation genetics. Increasingly, this means integrating multiomics approaches with machine learning, combining layers of biological information with computational models to reveal patterns that might otherwise remain hidden. In practice, this often means writing scripts, building pipelines, and shaping raw data into insight—turning fragments of code into narratives about resilience, chance, and transformation.
Institute for Plant Sciences, University of Cologne
Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences
Students’ Award for Outstanding Biology Teaching (2005, 2007)
Higher Education Department, Punjab, Pakistan
Global Excellence Postgraduate Scholarship (2009)
University of Dundee, UK
Goethe Graduate Academy Fellowship (2011-2015)
Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Erich Oberdorfer Foundation Research Award (2019)
Erich Oberdorfer Foundation, The State Museum of Natural History Karlsruhe, Germany
Member, IUCN Commission on Ecosystem Management (CEM) & Education & Communication (CEC)
ICUN
University Lecturer
Institute for Plant Sciences, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
01 May 2022 - present
Post Doctoral Researcher
Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
01 May 2018 - 01 May 2022