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Education

PhD, Neurosciences 2017

University of Aix Marseille, Developmental Biology Institute of Marseille, France

Thesis: “Evolution of a novel egg-laying behavior in the agricultural pest ”

Advisor: Dr. Benjamin Prud’homme

MS, Molecular Biosciences (Developmental Biology) 2012

University of Heidelberg, Center of Organismal Studies, Germany

Thesis: “Characterization of enhancer properties for gene regulation in the medaka fish”

Advisor: Dr. Laurence Ettwiller

BS, Direction of Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology 2009

University of Crete, Biology Department, Greece

Thesis: “The role of adhesion molecules TAG1 and PSA-NCAM in neuronal migration in the developing cerebral cortex”

Advisor: Prof. Domna Karagogeos

Positions

Stanford University 2020-present

Research Scientist, Biology Department (2023-present)

Postdoctoral Scholar, Biology Department (2020-2023)

Mentor: Prof. Dmitri Petrov

Led research on the genetics of adaptation to strong selective pressures over short and long evolutionary scales.
Led a collaboration between Professor Petrov's lab and Professor Paul Schmidt's lab at the University of Pennsylvania to study how resistance to synthetic insecticides is maintained over ecological timescales in natural populations and how synthetic insecticides affect seasonal evolution.
Used experimental evolution in field mesocosms with large-scale phenotyping and whole-genome pooled sequencing to track adaptive genomic and phenotypic evolution in large populations of from Spring to Fall 2021, in the presence and absence of fluctuating insecticide selection.
Developed resources (field collections and the generation of inbred lines for experimental evolution) to study seasonal adaptation to cardiac glycoside host plant toxins in natural populations of .

University of California, Berkeley 2017-2020

Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Integrative Biology

Mentor: Prof. Noah Whiteman

Led research on the genetics of adaptation to strong selective pressures over long evolutionary scales.
Led a collaboration between Professor Whiteman's lab and Professor Anurag Agrawal's lab at Cornell University to study how monarch butterflies and other insect specialists evolved resistance to toxins of their host plants over millions of years.
Used genome engineering (CRISPR) in to retrace the evolution of resistance to cardiac glycoside host plant toxins in the monarch butterfly lineage.
Initiated a project to study the evolution of resistance to cardiac glycoside host plant toxins in natural populations of .

University of Aix Marseille, Developmental Biology Institute of Marseille, France 2012-2017

PhD Scholarship Awardee

Advisor: Dr. Benjamin Prud’homme

Led research on the evolution of sensory ecology in a pest species, supported by a Marie Curie Initial Training Network Fellowship and a Fondation Pour La Recherche Médicale Scholarship.
Applied genome engineering (CRISPR) and neurogenetic tools in to study role of olfaction in its egg-laying preferences.

Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Munich, Germany 2014

Visiting Scholar

Supervisor: Prof. Ilona Grunwald Kadow

Led research on the evolution of olfactory preferences in a Drosophila pest species, undertaken as a secondment through the Marie Curie Initial Training Network Fellowship.

Developmental Biology Institute of Marseille, France 2012

Research Assistant

Supervisor: Dr. Benjamin Prud’homme

Supported research on the evolution of pigmentation and the development of transgenesis in a non-model species.

University of Heidelberg, Center of Organismal Studies, Germany 2011-2012

Research Assistant

Advisor: Dr. Laurence Ettwiller

Led research on mechanisms of enhancer function for gene regulation in the medaka fish.

European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany 2010

Visiting Scholar

Supervisor: Prof. Detlev Arendt

Supported research on the timing and cell birth of the main cell types of the dorsal brain of the annelid .

German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany 2010

Visiting Scholar

Supervisor: Prof. Michael Boutros

Supported research on the identification of regulators of the Wnt signaling in .

Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Heidelberg, Germany 2009-2010

Research Assistant

Supervisor: Prof. Andreas Schaefer

Supported research on histology and immunohistochemistry for olfactory bulb neurons in mice.

Research Grants

National Institute of Health (NIH) Pathway to Independence Award

K99 Phase 2021-2024

ROO Phase 2025-2028

Project: Genetics of adaptation to toxic environments
Role: Principal Investigator

Award: $1,000,000

European Society of Evolutionary Biology, Godfrey Hewitt Mobility Award 2009

Project: Genetics of adaptation in cardiac glycoside-resistant populations of D. subobscura

Role: Awardee

Award: $2,000

Awards & Honors

Fondation Pour La Recherche Médicale, France 2015

PhD Fellowship

Fully-funded research fellowship for the completion of the final-year PhD thesis.

FLiACT Marie Curie Initial Training Network , France 2012

Marie Curie Initial Training Network Fellowship

Fully funded research fellowship for three years as part of the “Systems neurosciences of Drosophila: From genes to circuits to Behavior.”

Publications

In preparation:

Karageorgi M, Bitter MC, Lappo E, Greenblum SI, Tran CT#, Travier C#, Oken H, Schmidt P*, Petrov DA*. Seasonal adaptation persists despite chromosome-wide sweeps driven by insecticide selection. *Equal contribution, #Undergraduate mentee co-author

Preprints:

Karageorgi M, Lyulina SA, Bitter MC, Lappo E, Greenblum SI, Mouza ZK#, Tran CT#, Huynh A#, Oken H, Schmidt P*, Petrov DA*. Dominance reversal protects large-effect resistance polymorphisms in temporally varying environments. bioRxiv doi: 10.1101/2024.10.23.619953. *Equal contribution, #Undergraduate mentee co-author

Peer-reviewed:

Verster KI, Cinege G, Lipinszki Z, Magyar LB, Kurucz E, Tarnopol RL, Abraham E, Darula Z, Karageorgi M, Tamsil JA, Akalu SM, Andó I, Whiteman NK. Evolution of insect innate immunity through domestication of bacterial toxins. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2023; 120(16):e2218334120

Paris M, Boyer R, Jaenichen R, Wolf J, Karageorgi M, Green J, Cagnon M, Parinello H, Estoup A, Gautier M, Gompel N, Prud’homme B. Near-chromosome level genome assembly of the fruit pest Drosophila suzukii using long-read sequencing. Scientific Reports 2020; 10(1): 11227

Karageorgi M*, Groen SC*, Sumbul F, Pelaez JN, Verster KI, Aguilar JM, Hastings AP, Bernstein SL, Matsunaga T, Astourian M#, Guerra G, Dobler S, Agrawal AA, Whiteman NK. Genome evolution retraces the evolution of toxin resistance in the monarch butterfly. Nature 2019; 574 (7778): 409-412. *Equal contribution, #Undergraduate mentee co-author

Verster KI, Wisecaver JH, Duncan RP, Karageorgi M, Gloss AD, Armstrong E, Price DK, Melon AR, Ali ZM, Whiteman NK. Horizontal transfer of bacterial cytolethal distending toxin B genes to insects. Molecular Biology and Evolution 2019; 36 (10): 2105-2110

Karageorgi M, Bräcker LB, Lebreton S, Minervino C, Cavey M, Siju KP, Grunwald Kadow IC, Gompel N*, Prud'homme B*. Evolution of Multiple Sensory Systems Drives Novel Egg-Laying Behavior in the Fruit Pest Drosophila suzukii. Current Biology 2017; 27(6): 847-853

Invited commentaries:

Karageorgi M*, Matsunaga T*, Whiteman NK. Drosophila: Where the wild flies are. Current Biology 2018; 28(24): R1382-R1384. *Equal contribution

Media Coverage

Carl Zimmer. How Monarch Butterflies Evolved to Eat Poison. The New York Times. Oct 7, 2019

Tim Vernimmen. How Monarch Butterflies Evolved to Eat a Poisonous Plant. Scientific American. Oct 2, 2019

Robert Sanders. CRISPRed flies mimic monarch butterfly – and could make you vomit. Berkeley News, Oct 2, 2019

Maddie Bender. Scientists Edited Fruit Fly Genes to Give Them Butterflies’ Toxic Abilities. Vice, Oct 2, 2019

Scientific Coverage

Koch L. An adaptive walk in the park. Nature Review Genetics 2019;20(12):704.

Maderspacher F, Stensmyr MC. Sensory Evolution: Trouble in the Cherry Orchard. Current Biology 2017;27(6)

Invited and Selected Conference Talks

Karageorgi M, Lyulina SA, Bitter MC, Lappo E, Greenblum SI, Mouza ZK, Tran CT, Huynh A, Oken H, Schmidt P, Petrov DA. Long-term maintenance of insecticide resistance polymorphisms through beneficial dominance shifts. Plant and Animal Genome Conference. Genetic Architecture in Arthropods from Insecticide Exposure Session. January 2025

Karageorgi M, Bitter MC, Greenblum S, To-Duyen Tran C, Huynh A, Oken H, Schmidt P, Petrov DA. Tracking evolution in response to anthropogenic chemical pollution in Drosophila. Bay Area Population Genomics Conference, University of California, Davis. May 2023

Karageorgi M, Groen SC, Sumbul F, Pelaez J, Verster KI, Aguilar JM, Hastings AP, Bernstein SL, Matsunaga T, Astourian M, Guerra G, Rico F, Dobler S, Agrawal AA, Whiteman NK. The making of the monarch: A constrained adaptive path to toxin resistance. The Allied Genetics Conference. Population, Evolutionary, and Quantitative Genetics session. (virtual). April 2020

Karageorgi M, Groen SC, Versten KI, Aguilar JM, Sumbul F, Hastings AP, Pelaez J, Bernstein SL, Agrawal AA, Whiteman NK. The making of the monarch. Bioscience Symposium on "Endless forms: applying novel techniques in non-model organisms". University of California, Berkeley. June 2018

Karageorgi M, Lebreton S, Paris M, Minervino C, Cavey M, Siju KP, Kadow IG, Matsunaga T, Whiteman NK, Gompel N, Prud’homme B., On the ORigin of olfactory worlds. Annual Drosophila Research Conference, Genetics Society of America. Philadelphia, PA, USA. April 2018

Karageorgi M, Lebreton S, Paris M, Minervino C, Cavey M, Siju KP, Grunwald Kadow IC, Gompel N, Prud'homme B. Olfactory specialization contributes to the making of the fruit pest Drosophila suzukii. 16th International symposium on Insect-plant relationships. Tours, France. July 2017

Karageorgi M, The making of a fruit pest: Unraveling the evolution of egg-laying choices in Drosophila suzukii. Annual meeting of the doctoral school in biological and health sciences in Aix – Marseille University. Marseille, France. June 2014

Invited Seminars

Adaptive tracking in response to insecticide pressure in Drosophila, Institute for the Diversity, Ecology, and Evolution of the Living World. Gif-sur-Yvette, France, June 2022

Genetics of adaptation to host plant toxins in monarchs. Department of Entomology, Michigan State University. Online (In person canceled due to Covid). March 2021

Genetics of adaptation to host plant toxins in the monarch butterfly and other specialist insects. Institute for the Diversity, Ecology, and Evolution of the Living World. Gif-Sur-Yvette, France. Online (In person canceled due to Covid). March 2021

Genetics of adaptation to host plant toxins in the monarch butterfly and other specialist insects. Department of Biology, University of San Francisco. Online (In person canceled due to Covid). November 2020

Genome editing as a basic research tool- Poison resistance in insects. Innovative Genomics Institute. Undergraduate CRISPR Journal Club (In person canceled due to Covid). April 2020

Olfactory specialization contributes to the making of the fruit pest Drosophila suzukii. Essig Museum of Entomology, University of California, Berkeley. September 2017

Teaching

Stanford University 2024

Lecturer/Co-Organizer, Biology Department

Organized and taught a mini-course on “Whole-genome sequencing and applications: from yeast to fruit flies.”

San Francisco State University 2022

Lecturer, Science Coding Immersion Program

Presented to undergraduate students

FliACT Marie Curie Initial Training Network, Lisbon, Portugal 2015

Lecturer, Molecular and Neuroanatomy Session

Taught “Learning from the lord of the genes” to graduate and postdoc students.

Mentorship

Stanford University 2022-2024

Zach Keanu Mouza, undergraduate research mentee

Research Project: Environment-dependent dominance allows rapid evolution and maintenance of insecticide resistance in Drosophila.

Achievements: Full-time paid research internship from Stanford Biology Summer Undergraduate Research, co-author on manuscript

Stanford University 2021-2024

Caitlynn To-Doyen Tran, undergraduate research mentee

Research Project: Characterize effect of insecticide application on seasonal evolution of Drosophila pigmentation.

Achievements: Co-author on manuscript

Stanford University 2022

Andy Viet Huynh, undergraduate research mentee

Research Project: Software development for semi-automatic estimation of census population Drosophila size from images

Achievements: Full-time paid research internship from Stanford Biology Summer Undergraduate Research, co-author on manuscript

Stanford University 2021

Caileb Travier, undergraduate research mentee

Research Project: Characterize effect of insecticide application on seasonal evolution of Drosophila.

Achievements: Co-author on manuscript

University of California, Berkeley 2020

Elizabeth Ordeman, undergraduate research mentee

Research Project: Determining the evolutionary forces responsible for toxin resistance in milkweed butterflies.

Achievements: Summer fellowship from Berkeley Research Apprentice Program

University of California, Berkeley 2020

Naama Weksler, undergraduate research mentee

Honor’s Thesis: Monarch flies on milkweeds: genetic basis of toxin resistance in an ecological context.

Achievements: Outstanding Scholar Award from the MCB Department at UC Berkeley and poster presentation at the Drosophila research conference 2021

University of California, Berkeley 2020

Derrick Yip, undergraduate research mentee

Research Project: Cardiac glycoside resistance in wild populations of Drosophila subobscura.

Achievements: Poster presentation at the Allied Genetics Conference 2020

University of California, Berkeley 2017-2020

Michael Astourian, undergraduate research mentee

Honor’s Thesis: Navigability of the Monarch Adaptive Landscape for Cardiac-glycoside Resistance.

Achievements: Co-author on manuscript

Service

Peer Reviewer, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Current Biology, 2018-present

Insect Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Co-Organizer, FliACT Summer School “Learning from the Lord of the genes” in Lisbon, Portugal 2015

Professional Development

Stanford University 2022

Teaching workshop for postdocs.

Stanford University 2022

Critical Consciousness and Anti-Oppressive Praxis program.

Janelia Research Campus, VA 2016

Junior Scientist Workshop on Genetic and Neurobiological Basis for Evolution of Behavior.

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, Sweden 2015

Graduate course in Insect Chemical Ecology

Co-organized with Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology Jena, Germany and Penn State University

FliACT Marie Curie Initial Training Network, Barcelona, Spain 2014

Workshop on neural and behavioral modelling in Drosophila.

Janelia Farm Research Campus, VA 2013

Workshop on emerging techniques to map and functionally characterize neural circuits in Drosophila.

FliACT Marie Curie Initial Training Network, Munich, Germany 2013

Workshop on behavioral assay design and data quantification.

Instituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Venice, Italy 2011

Summer School in Evolutionary Developmental Biology.

Professional Memberships

Genetics Society of America

Society for the Study of Evolution

European Society of Evolutionary Biology

Hellenic Evolutionary Society

Languages

English (full professional proficiency)

Greek (native speaker)

French (elementary speaker)

German (elementary speaker)