Susanne Pfeifer

Susanne Pfeifer is an Associate Professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University (ASU), with affiliations in the Center for Evolution & Medicine and the Center for Mechanisms of Evolution. Her lab integrates computational methods with evolutionary biology and genomics to study primate population genomics and mutation processes.

Education:

• Postdoctoral Fellow, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich)
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Vienna International Postdoctoral Program (VIPS), Center for Integrative Bioinformatics Vienna
• D.Phil. Statistics, University of Oxford
• M.Sc. & B.Sc. Computational Molecular Biology, Max-Planck-Institute for Computer Science/Saarland University

Research Focus:

Her lab explores genomic variation in non-human primates, mutation rates, and recombination dynamics. They develop computational tools for evolutionary inference, with applications to species divergence and clinical phenotypes. Teaching includes a course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) using bacteriophages to study genomics due to primate sample challenges.

Key Projects:

• Hybrid genome assembly of the endangered aye-aye
• Reference assembly for the coppery titi monkey
• Crossover/non-crossover analysis in rhesus macaques

Awards: None explicitly listed.

Advising & Grants: Engages students in undergraduate research (CURE programs), thesis supervision, and lab collaborations. Courses taught include statistical models for biology and research seminars.

Labs/Teams: Part of ASUpopgen.org and affiliated with ASU’s evolutionary genomics community.