معرفی
Professor Guillaume Chomicki holds a dual appointment as a Professor and NERC & ERC-UKRI fellow in the Department of Biosciences at Durham University. His research focuses on mutualism evolution, plant domestication, and symbiotic relationships. He has held prestigious fellowships including the Glasstone Research fellowship (Oxford) and Junior Research fellowship (Queen’s College, Oxford). Chomicki’s work combines field experiments, comparative genomics, and 3D imaging to study mutualistic systems like ant/plant farming and watermelon domestication.
Education: BSc in Plant Sciences (University of Manchester, 2012), PhD in Biology (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 2016). He is also affiliated as a visiting researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Research interests emphasize symbiotic relationships' evolutionary dynamics, including how mutualisms stabilize or breakdown over time. Notable projects include the ERC-funded 'BREAKDOWN' project (2023-2028) and NERC's 'Drivers of Major Transitions in Mutualistic Dependence' (2019-2026). His discoveries include identifying the first obligate plant farming by ants (Nature Plants 2016) and clarifying watermelon domestication origins via ancient DNA analysis.
Scientific awards include NERC & ERC-UKRI fellowship and multiple grants from DFG, National Geographic, and UKRI. His work spans over 50 peer-reviewed articles, with recent contributions on symbiotic compartmentalization, ant-farmed plant genomics, and ancient Citrullus seed analysis.
Advises Nathaniel Holmes (MSc) and collaborates widely in international teams. Active in labs focusing on phylogenomics, functional morphology, and symbiotic evolution.
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