The Di Stilio lab group investigates how plants evolved their incredible diversity, especially how flowers and various pollination strategies—such as wind pollination—came to be. Organisms often reuse existing genes in new ways, a process called “gene co-option,” to create new forms and functions. By working with a wide range of plants—from flowering species to ferns and gymnosperms—we uncover how the genetic toolkit for flowers existed long before flowers themselves, helping explain key innovations in plant evolution.

Verónica Di Stilio completed her undergraduate studies in Biology at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) in her native Argentina, specializing in Plant Ecology. After working for 2 years as a teaching assistant and pollination biologist at UBA, she pursued a Ph.D. in Plant Biology at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), where she worked on plant sex chromosome evolution under the guidance of David Mulcahy. Her postdoctoral training began in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (UMass) on pollen gene expression and the role of the floral transcription factor SUPERMAN in cell division, under the supervision of Alice Cheung. She continued her postdoctoral training with David Baum and Elena Kramer in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, where she was introduced to the field of Evolution of Development (Evo-Devo). She joined the faculty of the Department of Biology at the University of Washington in 2003. She continues to pursue her interests in the evolution of plant development with an emphasis on flowering. She has taught Introductory Biology (Biol 180, Genetics and Evolution), and currently teaches Plant Evolution (Biol 441, with lab) and Genetics of Plant Innovations (Biol 442, lecture/discussion).