Professor Dr. Tal Dagan studied biology and obtained her PhD at Tel Aviv University. She received her venia legendi in microbiology from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Since 2013, she has been Associate Professor of Evolutionary Microbiology at Kiel University.
Her early contributions to the field of evolutionary microbiology include the quantification and visualization of horizontal gene transfer as a major force shaping prokaryotic genomes. Since moving to Kiel, her research has centered on plasmid evolution, with major conceptual advances in our understanding of multilevel drift and selection in plasmid populations and of plasmids as Darwinian entities. Her work integrates evolutionary theory, comparative genomics, and experimental microbiology to reveal fundamental principles underlying plasmid evolution from emergence to extinction.