People

Daniel Promislow PhD began his career in biology as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. He completed his doctoral work in evolutionary biology with Paul Harvey at Oxford University. After post-doctoral work in Paris, at Queen’s University in Ontario, and at the University of Minnesota, in 1995 he joined the faculty in the Department of Genetics at the University of Georgia. Daniel moved to the University of Washington in July 2013, where he is professor in the Departments of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology and Biology. Daniel is broadly interested in evolutionary genetics, with a particular focus on projects related to aging, as well as studies on sexual selection, natural genetic variation, networks, and metabolomics. Daniel is the Principal Investigator of the Dog Aging Project , an NIH-funded long-term longitudinal study of the biological and environmental determinants of healthy aging in companion dogs. In his spare time, Daniel enjoys hiking, cooking, and skiing.

Junior Faculty Silvan Urfer is a veterinarian with a background in population genetics and survival analysis and is currently working on the Dog Aging Project for the Promislow and Kaeberlein Labs. He earned his veterinary degree and his doctorate from the University of Bern in his native Switzerland and did postdoctoral work in the Ostrander Lab at NIH/NHGRI in Bethesda, Maryland, and the Wolf Lab at UW Medicine Pathology, where he worked on population genetics and biomarkers of aging in dogs. Following Norm Wolf’s retirement at the end of 2011, he worked on analyzing large veterinary databases in cooperation with the private sector, investigating preventive veterinary interventions that could have beneficial effects on overall life expectancy in dogs. In 2016, Silvan came back to the UW as a Senior Fellow to work on the Dog Aging Project, and was promoted to Acting Instructor in Spring of 2019. In his spare time, he also investigates the effects of aging on yeast-fermented Vitis vinifera lysates using organoleptic bioassays.

Abbey Marye is a graduate student in the Institute of Public Health Genetics MPH program and is also working on a certificate in Statistical Genetics. She earned her B.A. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from the University of Colorado Boulder. Her undergraduate research focused on the impact of physiological stress on liver tissue in mice that had spent time on the International Space Station. She currently works on the Dog Aging Project to explore DNA methylation changes that are associated with wildfire smoke and the possible long-term health impacts of those changes. When she is not in the lab, you can find her fiercely cheering on the UW softball team or on the field pitching for her own fastpitch team on the weekends. Her downtime includes reading, crocheting, or watching TV with her rambunctious orange cat, Custard.

Tom Evans(They/Them) is an international student from Wales visiting from Bennington College in Vermont. They are a junior with a concentration in cellular biology and pathology, currently deciding between pursuing a PhD or medical school (or both!) upon graduation. Tom is interested broadly in translational research and how we can use model organisms to learn more about human biology, and is currently driven by issues surrounding body image and body weight discriminnation within medicine. They believe that not enough is being done to educate people about fat, destigmatising its existence and exploring the relationship between body fat and how much we eat. As a result, they are currently studying the relationship between the eating habits of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and body fat levels across the natural genetic variation within the Drosophila Genetic Reference Panel. This experiment is part of a larger study of  sexual dimorphism in body fat in flies undertaken to better understand the wide ranging variation in body fat between the sexes. Fundamentally Tom is asking if flies that eat more food have more fat, and if there is a difference in this relationship between males and females. This may seem simple, but measuring the feeding of an organism so small is not that easy! We usually assume that more food means more fat which is what makes this work even more exciting, because most assumptions we make in research turn out to be wrong! The main reason that fruit flies are studied is that they are genetically comparable to humans, and so with enough time put into research like this, Tom hopes to be able to make connections to the human genome to help add an important perspective to research concerning body fat. This is Tom’s first research opportunity as an undergraduate. They hope to return to UW and their research to learn more about what makes us tick through the eyes of a fruitfly. Outside of the lab they can be found either at the gym lifting weights whilst contemplating the reasons behind their endless R error messages and avoiding the smell of yeast at all times.