Molecular evolution refers to the study of changes in living systems that have eventually led to the formation of unicellular and multicellular organisms. In this talk, we will understand how species evolve, understand a lot about ourselves, and how human evolution is taking place over the last couple hundred thousand years. We will also get a glimpse at the molecular wars that have been ongoing between microbes, between microbes and humans, and how some of the ancient genes that we inherited from our primate ancestors are helping us fight these wars.

About the speaker: Dr. Krishna. B S Swamy joined the Biological and Life Sciences division of Ahmedabad University as an Assistant Professor in February 2019. He is a recipient of the prestigious DBT-Ramalingaswami Fellowship from the Government of India. He is an evolutionary systems biologist and works on two fundamental aspects of evolution: Molecular mechanisms in evolution and First-principles prediction in evolution. He has a master's degree in physics, a PhD in Computational Biology, and was a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow in Molecular and Cell Biology at the Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica (Taiwan). In addition to his research, he is passionate about running and cycling and loves classical music.