Roman obtained his PhD in evolutionary genetics from the University of Chicago (Committee on Evolutionary Biology) in 2008, while working with Prof. Manyuan Long’s Group. His research focused on the molecular evolution and population genetics of gene families (including chemoreceptor families) and the rarely recombining fourth chromosome in the D. melanogaster subgroup. Following his PhD, he carried out a post doc with Prof. Andrew Clark’s Group at Cornell where he was involved in generating and analyzing population genomic data sets designed to investigate the forces leading to genetic and phenotypic divergence between geographically diverse D. melanogaster populations. Roman will join Richard Benton’s lab in Jan 2013 with the aim of bridging his evolutionary genomics background with functional studies of Drosophila taste evolution. His initial interests are in the role that taste receptor duplication events play in altering sensory neural networks between species, and in the evolution of oviposition preference, supported by a Novartis Foundation grant.