Yoshan Moodley, Ph.D.

Yoshan Moodley is an evolutionary biologist who was born in Durban and educated in New Zealand and South Africa. He obtained his PhD in 2003 from the University of Cape Town. Moodley worked as a postdoc at Cardiff University (UK) and the Max Planck Institute in Berlin (Germany). He then led his own research group in Vienna (Austria) and was appointed as a full professor at the University of Venda (South Africa) in 2015. His research is largely focused on the evolutionary history and conservation of African wildlife, although he is also known for his work on the population genetics of Helicobacter pylori, which he used to trace several prehistoric human colonization and migration events. His group is one of the few in South Africa working exclusively with whole-genome data. He is currently the president of the Southern African Wildlife Management Association (SAWMA), chair of the African Conservation Genetics Specialist Group (AfCGSG), a member of the African Rhino Specialist Group (AfRSG), and the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf). Based at the University of Venda in the tropical north of South Africa, he teaches evolutionary genetics and contributes his skills towards the development of students from rural and historically disadvantaged backgrounds.