Carlos Machado was named associate dean for research in the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, effective July 1, 2025. 

Machado joined UMD in 2009 as an associate professor and was promoted to professor in 2016. He directed the Behavior, Ecology, Evolution and Systematics interdisciplinary graduate program from 2013 to 2015. As an evolutionary biologist, Machado studies the genetics of species divergence, plant-insect coevolution and evolutionary genomics. 

In his current research, he uses genomic, population genetic, phylogenetic and functional genomic approaches to study species and genome divergence. Work in Machado’s lab involves field collections, molecular biology methods and computational approaches to analyze large genomic datasets. He has been continuously funded by the National Science Foundation since 2005.

Machado has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed publications and advised more than 50 postdocs and graduate, undergraduate and high school students. He serves as an associate editor of coevolution for the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, as a review editor for evolutionary and population genetics for the journal Frontiers in Genetics, and on the editorial board of the journal Fly. 

He earned his bachelor’s degree in biology from Universidad Nacional de Colombia in 1992 and his Ph.D. in evolutionary genetics from the University of California, Irvine in 1998. Before arriving at UMD, Machado held a faculty position at the University of Arizona.