Ram Lab

We study evolutionary biology, ecology, cultural evolution, behavior, and communication, using mathematical, computational, statistical, and AI models and collaborations with empirical biologists. Our interests span various biological systems, from viruses and microbes to cetaceans and hominids. See the research page to learn about our research interests and projects.

Our lab is in the School of Zoology in the Faculty of Life Sciences at Tel Aviv University.
The lab is a member of the Safra Center for Bioinformatics, the Center for AI & Data Science, and the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University.
We are also part of the Minerva Center on Lab Evolution and the Minerva Center for the Study of Population Fragmentation.

News

• We recieved a grant from the TAU Center for AI and Data Science, together with Shay Rotics and Orr Spiegel from Tel Aviv University, to develop an unsupervised learning AI model for animal biologgers.
• New paper in Nature Communications with Limor Raviv and Lukas Galke demonstrates that deep neural networks exhibit improved language learning with compositionally.
• Josh's paper on cultural evolution in the Austronesean people of the Pacific Ocean in now published on Evolutionary Human Sciences.
• Our new paper with Gresham lab is now available on eLife. We suggest that DNA replication errors are a major source of adaptive gene amplification in yeast.
• Congratulations and good luck to Remus and Josh on their new postdoc positions! Remus is now at Harvard Medical School, and Josh is at Johns Hopkins University.
• New paper by Saar just published at Royal Society Open Science, on cultural evolution with prestige biased transmission.
• Boaz's paper on the evolution of self-replicating artificial neural networks is now published at PLOS Computational Biology.
• A new paper suggests that aneuploidy can be an evolutionary diversion on the path to adaptation, now published in Molecular Biology and Evolution. The research was performed by Ilia and Martin, with help from Selmecki, Pilpel, and Yona labs.
• Read Yoav's journal club on the evolution of modifier genes, now published at Nature Reviews Genetics.
• We say goodbye to Remus and congratulate him on his future adventures in research!
• Our new paper on cultural transmission of cooperative hunting is now online! This study was performed by Talia Borofsky while on her visit to our lab; she has recently completed her PhD at the Feldman lab in Stanford.
• Gabriela's paper is now published in Genetics! This is a collaboration with Tzachi Pilpel.
• Remus has presented his work on evolutionary rescue in cancer at the Mathematical Models of Evolutionary Rescue meeting at the MPI in Plon, Germany.
• Our new paper with the Stern lab is now available at Virus Evolution. We used neural networks and simulations to infer the parameters that govern the evolution of the MS2 bacteriophage. At the 2023 meeting of the Israeli Society for Evolutionary Biology, our lab presented talks by Remus Stana and Yoav Ram and posters by Yoav Livne and Nadav Ben-Nun.
• We recieved a grant from the TAU Center for AI and Data Science, together with Yoni Belmaker and Yossi Yovel, to develop an AI-based acoustic monitoring tool for coral reef health.
• Congratulations to Remus Stana for winning the Ela Kodesz travel grant!
• Two new MSc students in the lab: Welcome Stav, and Nadav! Congratulations to Saar on successfully defending his MSc thesis, "Cultural Evolutionary Dynamics with Success and Influence Bias."
• We received a BSF grant together with David Gresham from NYU! The grant topics is Integrated experimental and simulation-based inference to study copy number variation in evolution.
• New paper is out in PLOS Biology! We inferred the rate and effect of CNV in yeast using neural networks and simulations. A collaboration with the Gresham lab at New York University, led by Grace Avecilla.
• Congratulations to Joshua Caleb Mcdonald for being selected as a Zuckerman postdoctoral scholar! Josh will formally join our lab next week.
• New paper on the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 under lockdowns and testing with Yael Gurevich and Lilach Hadany.
• The Israeli Society for Evolutionary Biology will host it's third annual conference on March 9-10 at Weizmann Institute.
• The lab's new postdoc is Remus Stana, who recently received his PhD in mathematics from Leeds University.
• We welcome to the lab a new graduate student, Rony, and two visiting students Talia, Luise.
• Our paper on late effective start date of NPIs (lockdowns) during the first wave of COVID outbreaks is published at IJID. Work by Ilia Kohanovski and a collaboration with Uri Obolski. A new paper on the evolution of altruism under conformity and content-biased cultural transmission has been published in Theoretical Population Biology. It is a collaboration with Marc Feldman and Kaleda Denton of Stanford University. Congratulations to Boaz Shvarzman on successfully defending his thesis on the evolution of artificial neural networks!
• New preprint on simulation-based inference from adaptive dynamics using neural networks. This is a collaboration with the Gresham lab at New York University, led by Grace Avecilla.
• Congratulations to Dor Cohen for successfully defending his thesis on cultural evolution of cooperation!