Professor Frank Jiggins

Frank is an Official Fellow and supervises Natural Sciences (Biological). He is Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at the University's Department of Genetics.

Biography

Frank was an undergraduate at Emmanuel, studying Natural Sciences and specialising in Zoology. He then remained at the College, but crossed the road to the Department of Genetics for his PhD and a College Research Fellowship. At the end of this, he took up a Wellcome Trust Fellowship and moved to the University of Edinburgh to establish his own research group, working on the evolution and genetics of host–parasite interactions. He was then awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, and shortly afterwards returned to Cambridge and Emmanuel. 

Teaching

At Emmanuel and the University, Frank teaches undergraduate courses on evolutionary biology. He gives University lectures on the 1B 'Evolution and Animal Diversity' and Part II Genetics courses, focusing on population genetics and the evolution of infectious disease. He also supervises on these courses and 1A 'Evolution and Behaviour'. He has supervised numerous PhD and MPhil students.

Research

Frank's research group studies the evolution and genetics of hosts and parasites, using insects and rabbits as a model system. Using the tools of genomics and evolutionary genetics, his lab's research is addressing questions like: "which genes cause variation in susceptibility to infection"; "why is this variation maintained in populations"; "how does natural selection shape parasite and host genomes"; and "what determines whether mosquitoes can transmit human disease"?