Siddharth S. Kulkarni
Postdoctoral fellow
Email: sskulkarni24 at wisc dot edu
Personal website: sskspider.com
Postdoctoral fellow
Email: sskulkarni24 at wisc dot edu
Personal website: sskspider.com
Fascinated by the evolving biodiversity and its maintenance on our planet, I study arachnid evolution as a model using morphology, advanced genomic and transcriptomic technologies. My goal is to understand patterns and exceptions in their evolution that can explain the evolutionary history of their extant diversity. Given that no data matrix for evolutionary studies is ever complete in the real world, I am working on probabilistic models that can explain the effect of missing data and ways to alleviate it.
During weekends, I practice coding in python and bash to implement my ideas on testing evolutionary hypotheses. Once a month, I engage with citizen scientists across south Asia and help documenting spiders (e.g. SpiderIndia groups on iNaturalist, Facebook and India Biodiversity Portal), a long-term initiative to document spiders. We also organize events like Spider Week and annual meetings in India. I do have life other than research which includes travelling and playing cricket. For those interested in playing cricket, I would like to bowl first! |