Leonard Dekens

In the DiFrisco lab of Theoretical Biology, Léonard will investigate how evolvability - the capacity to evolve - and robustness are maintained and balanced in the Genotype-Phenotype maps of complex organisms. Under the premice that functions in a body organization are highly integrated, how can different traits respond to conflicting selection pressures without disrupting already adapted traits? In particular, which type of compensatory mechanisms can occur in particular GP maps?

Léonard has been trained in Mathematics at the ÉNS of Lyon (BSc, MSc) before growing an interest for theoretical models of evolutionary biology following a year-long research visit in Sally Otto's lab of evolutionary biology at UBC (Vancouver) in 2019. In July 2022, he received a PhD in Mathematics at the University Claude Bernard Lyon 1 for his modelling work of evolutionary dynamics of spatially distributed species. He then held a independent postdoctoral fellowship awarded by the Foundation for Mathematical Sciences in Paris to pursue his own research interests about how species adapt to changing climatic conditions in fragmented environments.