Yonas I. Tekle, Ph.D.

Title: Assistant Professor, Department of Biology
Email: ytekle@spelman.edu, or yonastekle@gmail.com 
Office: 404-270-5779; fax, 404-270-5725 
Location: Science Center 271
Personal Links: http://www.facebook.com/groups/301376976565152/;
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Tekle%20YI%5BAU%5D 

Educational Background:
Uppsala University, Ph.D.
University of Asmara, B.S.

Research Interests:
My lab implements the basic principles of evolution to study the diversity, origin and relationships of medical and nonmedical microbes. I am also fascinated by interdisciplinary research approaches in answering challenging questions that affect our everyday life. I am particularly interested in integrating bioinformatics/phylogenetics with mathematical modeling in order to understand the evolution and epidemics of infectious diseases 

Course(s) Taught:

• Bio 110 – Biological Communities, Evolution and Biodiversity
• BIO 471 – Cellular & Molecular Biology 
• BIO 416 – Microbial Origins Research 
• SBIO 491N – Microbial Diversity and Evolution
• SBIO 491 – Undergraduate research 

Selected Publication (s):

• Tekle Y. I., Anderson o. Roger, †Lecky A., †Kelly S. D. A New Freshwater Amoeba: Cochliopodium pentatrifurcatum n. sp. (Amoebozoa, Amorphea). In press. Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology
• Tekle, Y.I., Nielsen KM., Liu J., Pettigrew M., Meyers LA., Townsend JP., Galvani AP. 2012. Controlling nosocomial methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus through directed vaccination, treatment, and evolutionary response. PLoS One 7,12/e50688 
• Ndeffo Mbah M.L., Liu J., Bauch C.T., Tekel Y.I., Medlock J., Meyers L.A., Galvani A.P. 2012. The Impact of Imitation on Vaccination Behavior in Social Contact. PLoS Comput Biol 8(4): e1002469. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002469
• Townsend J.P., Su Z., Tekle, Y.I. 2012. Phylogenetic signal and noise: Predicting the power of a dataset to resolve phylogeny. Syst Biol. doi: 10.1093/sysbio/sys036
• Liu J., Kochin B.F., Tekle, Y.I., Galvani A.P. 2011. Epidemiological game-theory dynamics of chickenpox vaccination in the USA and Israel. J. R. Soc. Interface 7, 9 66 68-76; 
• Tekle, Y. I., Grant J., †Kovner, A., Townsend J., Katz, L. 2010. Identification of new molecular markers for assembling the eukaryotic tree of life. Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. (), doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2010.03.010.
• Tekle, Y. I., Parfrey L.W., Katz L.A. 2009. Molecular Data are Transforming Hypotheses on the Origin and Diversification of Eukaryotes. BioScience 59: 471–481.

See my CURRICULUM VITA