Hello world. I am Floyd A. Reed. I am currently an associate professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in Honolulu. My training is in Drosophila (fruit fly) and human population genetics; however, my work is defined by what I do which evolves over time. I do not limit our lab work to a particular theme and the best way to see what we have successfully completed is to look through our publications. Here in Hawaiʻi my lab is working on a wide range of organisms using molecular genetic and population genetic tools. I am a strong believer in student self-determination and, right or wrong, I expect my graduate students to bring their own questions to work on in the lab and so far they have had an excellent track record of raising their own research funding. I feel that in the long run this is better for me (in terms of broadening my focus) and for them in terms of developing their own future research directions. In the process I have had graduate students work on human genetics in West Africa, population genomics of sea urchins, Hawaiian honeycreeper microbiota, novel sponges found in Hawaiʻi, and hybridization in Central American crocodiles.
I also have had several postdocs and collaborators with the main goal of developing genetic pest management tools for mosquitoes in Hawaiʻi and more broadly for applications across the Indo-Pacific.