Rate My Professor Ryan Bracewell

Ryan Bracewell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Indiana University Bloomington, where he joined the faculty in January 2022. He earned a BS from Colorado State University in 2002, an MS from Utah State University in 2009, and a PhD from the University of Montana in 2015. Following his doctoral studies, Bracewell conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley from 2016 to 2020 as an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Postdoctoral Fellow, receiving the fellowship award in 2017. Between his postdoc and academic appointment, he served as an Entomologist with the USDA Forest Service from 2020 to 2021. His research integrates ecology, evolutionary biology, and genomics to investigate the formation of new species and the genetic changes driving reproductive isolation and phenotypic differentiation.

Bracewell's lab employs fieldwork, experimental manipulations, and genomic approaches in model systems like Drosophila and non-model organisms such as bark beetles and fungi. Key research areas include sex chromosome evolution and its role in speciation, the ecology and evolution of bark beetle-fungus symbiosis, and the genetics of behavioral evolution. His recent NIH Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA, R35) from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, valued at nearly $2 million over five years and awarded in 2023, supports studies on chromosome evolution, Y chromosome degeneration, neo-sex chromosome formation, and their genomic consequences in fruit flies and bark beetles. Bracewell has authored influential publications, including "Dynamic turnover of centromeres drives karyotype evolution in Drosophila" (eLife, 2019), "Rapid neo-sex chromosome evolution and incipient speciation in a major forest pest" (Nature Communications, 2017), "Massive gene amplification on a recently formed Drosophila Y chromosome" (Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2019), and "Know your farmer: ancient origins and multiple independent domestications of ambrosia beetle fungal cultivars" (Molecular Ecology, 2018). These works contribute significantly to understanding karyotype evolution, symbiosis diversification, and speciation mechanisms in insects.