Rate My Professor Robert Lanfear

Professor Robert Lanfear serves in the Division of Ecology and Evolution at the Australian National University’s Research School of Biology. He holds a BSc and honours degree in Ecology, an MSc in Artificial Intelligence, and a PhD in developmental biology from the University of Sussex, completed in 2008. Lanfear began his postdoctoral research with a short stint at University College London attempting to edit shrimp genomes. In 2008, he joined the Australian National University as a postdoc, remaining there for six years. From 2014 to 2016, he held a permanent position as Senior Lecturer in Genomics at Macquarie University in Sydney, before returning to the Australian National University in 2016.

Lanfear’s research focuses on molecular evolution, from the origin of mutations in individuals to their fixation in evolving lineages. His work spans somatic mutations, particularly in plants via genome sequencing and fieldwork; phylogenetics, including model selection and tree inference; comparative methods applied to large datasets of genetic, environmental, and life-history traits in clades such as mammals, birds, and plants; and bioinformatics software development. Key contributions include PartitionFinder (2012), PartitionFinder 2 (2017), and co-development of tools like IQ-TREE 2 (2020), which facilitated COVID-19 genomic epidemiology. Highly influential publications feature “IQ-TREE 2: new models and efficient methods for phylogenetic inference in the genomic era” (Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2020; over 16,000 citations), “PartitionFinder: combined selection of partitioning schemes and substitution models for phylogenetic analyses” (Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2012; over 6,000 citations), “PartitionFinder 2: new methods for selecting partitioned models of evolution for molecular and morphological phylogenetic analyses” (Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2017; over 6,000 citations), and “Phylogenomics resolves the timing and pattern of insect evolution” (Science, 2014). He received the 2023 Eureka Prize for Excellence in Research Software, shared with Minh Bui, and the College of Science Dean’s Commendation for Excellence in Supervision in 2024. Lanfear’s open-source tools have profoundly impacted phylogenomics and evolutionary biology.