Meredith Protas, PhD

Before joining the Dominican faculty, Meredith did research at UC Berkeley on cave-dwelling crustaceans and studied the genetic basis of human eye disease in her research work at UCSF. Currently, she uses genetic, molecular, and developmental techniques to answer evolutionary questions about cave animals.

Education

Harvard University, PhD, Genetics

Pomona College, BA, Biology

Research Interests

Meredith works on a crustacean species that has both surface-dwelling and cave-dwelling populations with extreme differences in eye size, pigmentation, and appendage length. Her goal, and that of her team, is to investigate the genetics and developmental biology behind these differences and to understand how and why these characteristics evolved.