Dr Cara Conradsen is an associate research fellow and quantitative and evolutionary biologist specialising in bioinformatics, population genomics, and biostatistics.

Her research examines how genetic variation is introduced and maintained in natural populations.

Based in Michiel Vos’s lab, Cara’s current work examines the role of selection acting on horizontally transferred genes in bacterial populations.

More broadly, she is interested in the evolutionary and ecological processes that shape pangenome evolution and the maintenance of diversity, integrating quantitative genetic theory with bioinformatic and statistical approaches.

Cara completed her PhD at the University of Queensland and later worked at the University of Bristol on bacterial genome evolution.