Nathan Lo

Professor Nathan Lo is Professor of Evolutionary Biology in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, at the University of Sydney, a position he has held since joining the university in 2009. He earned a BMedSci (Hons) and PhD from the University of Sydney. His distinguished career encompasses an ARC Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Sydney (2004–2007), postdoctoral fellowships at the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences in Tsukuba, Japan (2001–2003) and the University of Milan, Italy (2003–2004), Biodiversity Research Initiative Leader at the Australian Museum, Sydney (2008–2009), ARC QEII Research Fellowship (2010–2014), and ARC Future Fellowship (2017–2021). Lo's research specializes in genome evolution, molecular ecology, and phylogenetics of arthropods, with a focus on complex interactions between arthropods and microbes, as well as social insects including termites, cockroaches, and ticks. He co-founded the Molecular Ecology, Evolution, and Phylogenomics Laboratory in 2011 and has supervised more than 20 Honours and PhD students. He is a member of the Faculty of Science, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, Sydney Institute of Agriculture, University of Sydney Net Zero Institute Research Group, and Aola-Richards Sydney Insect Hub.

With over 190 scientific publications cited more than 13,000 times and an h-index of 62, Nathan Lo has made substantial contributions to evolutionary biology. Key works include the edited book Biology of Termites: a Modern Synthesis (2010, with David E. Bignell and Yves Roisin); A cellulase gene of termite origin (Nature, 1998, with H. Watanabe et al.); Evidence from multiple gene sequences indicates that termites evolved from wood-feeding cockroaches (Current Biology, 2000, with G. Tokuda et al.); Polyphenism in insects (Current Biology, 2011, with S.J. Simpson and G.A. Sword); and The evolutionary history of termites as inferred from 66 mitochondrial genomes (Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2015, with T. Bourguignon et al.). His research has advanced understanding of eusociality and arthropod evolution.

Professional Email: nathan.lo@sydney.edu.au