current Graduate Students
Current graduate students, to add or update your information, please fill out the form here
Mira Abrecht
Advisor: David Jacobs
Office: 2162 Terasaki Life Science Building (TLSB)
Research: Environmental DNA, genomics of estuarine fish
Katie Adler
Advisor: Dan Blumstein
Office: 4th Floor LSB
Research: behavior, human-wildlife interactions, conservation, mammalogy
Ary Amaya
Advisor: Elsa Ordway
Office: 4th Floor Botany
Research: Indigenous ecological management and monitoring of urban ecosystem dynamics using remote sensing technologies
Wilmer Amaya-Mejia
Advisor: Pamela Yeh
Office: 2nd floor Botany
Research: Urbanization of dark-eyed juncos and their diseases.
Nico Andrade
Advisor: Lawren Sack
Research: soil microbiology, forest-soil interactions, forest hydraulics
Ioana Anghel
Advisor: Felipe Zapata
Research: Evolution of species and floral scent in the flowering plant genus Linanthus
Berenice Badillo
Advisor: Victoria Sork
Office: 4140 Terasaki Life Science Building (TLSB)
Phone: 310-794-1431
Research: Local adaptation and phenotypic plasticity of trees in response to climate change, conservation biology
Taylor Bastian
Advisor: Dan Blumstein
Phone: (150)960-7760
Research: Environmental impacts on social structure and fitness
Austin Betancourt
Advisor: Paul Barber
Office: 2140 Terasaki Life Science Building (TLSB)
Research: Conservation henomics/marine ecology and evolution
Kobie Boslough
Advisor: Karen Sears
Office: 2162 Terasaki Life Science Building (TLSB)
Research: Evolutionary biology of bats, mechanisms of aging and development, mammalian reproduction and reproductive senescence
Jill Carpenter
Advisor: Dan Blumstein
Research: Effects of anthropogenic stressors on bat ecology and behavior, conservation
Joseph Curti
Advisor: Robert Wayne and Bradley Shaffer
Office: 4153 Terasaki Life Science Building (TLSB)
Research: Application of whole-genome sequencing to California conservation management in California quail (Callipepla californica), California red-legged frogs (Rana draytonii), and Yuma myotis bats (Myotis yumanensis).
Joseph ("Joey") Curti
Advisor: Brad Shaffer
Office: Terasaki Life Sciences Building, Room 4153
Morgan Dean
Advisor: Elsa Ordway
Research: Tropical forest structure
Carissa DeRanek
Advisor: Elsa Ordway
Research: Diversity-stability relationships across California ecosystems
Joseph Di Liberto
Advisor: Dr. Pamela Yeh
Office: 2nd Floor Botany
Research: Urban Ecology, Animal Behavior, Integrative Biology, Conservation, Ornithology
Tanner Dulay
Advisor: Priyanga Amarasekare
Office: 660 Boyer
Research: Emergence of community structure in ecological interactions, particularly mutualisms
S. Madigan Durham
Advisor: Molly Fox
Research: Understanding human health from an evolutionary perspective, in particular thinking about life history and the impact of epigenetics.
Janine Fischer
Advisor: Gregory Grether and Debra Shier
Office: 4329 Life Science Building (LSB)
Research: How interspecific competition affects species coexistence and the conservation of threatened and endangered species
Amiel Flores
Advisor: Paul Barber
Research: Investigating the potential of organism transport on problematic macroalgal mats using metabarcoding techniques
Ashlyn Ford
Advisor: Peggy Fong
Office: 4100 Life Science Building (LSB)
Research: Assessing the health of tropical reef communities and evaluating how infectious diseases are impacting these communities
Cynthia Frausto
Advisor: Peter Nonacs
Kaija Gahm
Advisor: Noa Pinter-Wollman
Office: 3rd Floor Botany
Research: Movement ecology and social behavior of vultures; open science, open code, and computational reproducibility
Kaija Gahm
Advisor: Noa Pinter-Wollman
Office: Botany 3rd floor
Research: Animal movement and social behavior
Alejandra Gamboa
Advisor: Noa Pinter-Wollman
Research: Reciprocal relationships between host behavior and the microbiome
Claire Geiman
Advisor: Stepfanie Aguillon
Office: Botany 110
Research: Speciation and adaptation in birds, evolutionary genomics
Sierra Glassman
Advisor: Dr. Pamela Yeh
Research: I plan to study how Dark-eyed Juncos are adapting behaviorally and morphologically to novel and changing environments.
Lauren Glevanik
Advisor: Nathan Kraft
Office: 4th Floor Botany
Research: Traits that affect seed dispersal, community assembly, and patterns of biodiversity and coexistence in Californian grasslands
Jesse Gomez
Advisor: Dr. Lawren Sack
Office: 4th Floor Botany
Research: Plant physiology, Phloem transport, and the impacts of phloem on xylem function.
Katie Hannibal
Advisor: Peggy Fong
Phone: 818-942-4269
Research: Anthropogenic effects on nearshore marine ecosystems, specifically how algal interactions influence community structure
Kenji Hayashi
Advisor: Nathan Kraft
Office: 410 Botany
Phone: 310-825-4967
Research: Consequences of competitive interactions in spatially heterogeneous environments for plant species distributions and coexistence
Madison Hopkins
Advisor: Greg Grether
Office: 4329 Life Science Building (LSB)
Research: Interspecific interactions, theory and modeling, evolution of interspecific territoriality
Aidan Howenstine
Advisor: Karen Sears
Office: TSLB 2162
Research: The role of gene network architecture in biasing the development of phenotypic variation
Hannah Larson
Advisor: Colin Kremer
Research: Eco-evolutionary effects of dormancy on phytoplankton fitness in fluctuating environments
Shanti Lindberg
Advisor: Karen Sears
Office: 2162 TLSB
Research: Investigating the evolution and development of the marsupium (i.e., the pouch) in New World marsupials. Utilization of museum collections on research.
Onny Nurrahman Marwayana
Advisor: Paul Barber
Office: Barber Lab
Phone: 310-889-4552
Research: Environmental DNA (eDNA), Marine Biology, Zoology, Marine Ecology, Molecular Ecology, Ecology, Aquatic Community.
Alin Mazmanian
Advisor: Barbara Natterson-Horowitz
Research: Evolutionary medicine, mental health, comparative physiology
Graham Montgomery
Advisor: Morgan Tingley
Research: Insect declines & their impacts on insectivorous bird populations, ecological monitoring, and evidence synthesis
Aisling Murran
Advisor: Van Savage
Office: Boyer Hall
Research: I work to elucidating patterns in the form biological systems, from ecosystem to individuals, with a particular interest in stability and diversity. This work draws from the fields of ecology, evolution, mathematical modeling and computational biology.
Sean O'Fallon
Advisor: Noa Pinter-Wollman
Research: Ecological and evolutionary relationship between nest architecture and collective behavior, considering the spatial structure of the nest as an extended phenotype of the ant colony
Anna Jiselle Ongjoco
Advisor: Dr. Elsa Ordway
Office: 4th Floor Botany
Research: Plant ecophysiology, global change
Erika Ono-Kerns
Advisor: James Lloyd-Smith
Research: Disease ecology; conservation biology; sampling bias
Xochitl Ortiz Ross
Advisor: Dan Blumstein
Office: 4802 Life Science Building (LSB)
Research: Long-term fitness consequences of early-life adversity in yellow-bellied marmots
Madeleine Pacheco
Advisor: Paul Barber
Office: Terasaki Life Sciences Building
Research: Coral reef resilience and conservation
Eliseo Parra
Advisor: Dan Blumstein
Sara Sofia Pedraza Narváez
Advisor: Felipe Zapata
Office: 2nd floor Botany
Research: Tropical biology, evolution and eco-physiology of plants, climate change.
Kelsey Reckling
Advisor: Morgan Tingley
Research: Ornithology, urban ecology, migration, conservation
Nick Russo
Advisor: Thomas Smith
Office: 300 La Kretz Hall (LKH)
Research: Movement ecology, remote sensing, tropical ecology, animal-vegetation feedbacks
Maya Sagarin
Advisor: Nathan Kraft
Research: temporal coexistence mechanisms in tropical systems
Kami Schneider
Advisor: Nathan Kraft
Research: I am interested in exploring and predicting plant community dynamics under global change
Kristen Schott
Advisor: James Lloyd-Smith
Office: TLSB 4000
Research: Disease ecology, multi-host pathogens, pathogen spillover across ecosystem boundaries, wildlife health
Celine Snedden
Advisor: James Lloyd-Smith
Office: 4000 Terasaki Life Science Building (TLSB)
Research: Modeling within-host viral infection dynamics
Hayden Speck
Advisor: David Jacobs
Office: 2154 Terasaki Life Science Building (TLSB)
Research: Evolution of early animals, evolution of development in cnidarians, EvoDevo of moon jellyfish (Aurelia coerulea) life cycle transitions
Hannah Stouter
Advisor: Elsa Ordway
Office: 4th Floor Botany
Research: Effects of climate change and land use change on ecosystems and communities the Congo basin
Ben Tonelli
Advisor: Morgan Tingley
Office: 3rd Floor Botany
Research: Migration and disease
Nidhi Vinod
Advisor: Elsa Ordway and Lawren Sack
Office: 4th Floor Botany
Phone: 540-746-0542
Research: Linking leaf level physiology and functions to forest ecosystems level processes to understand how forests are functioning during climate change
Veronika Vucaj
Advisor: Dr. Peter Nonacs
Office: La Kretz Botany Building
Research: Life-history theory, developmental biology, evolutionary medicine
Richard Wolff
Advisor: Nandita Garud
Joanna Wu
Advisor: Morgan Tingley
Office: 3rd Floor Botany
Research: Conservation, ornithology, ecology
Heidi Yang
Advisor: Victoria Sork
Office: 4140 Terasaki Life Science Building (TLSB)
Research: Ecological genomics/epigenomics
Heidi Yang
Advisor: Victoria Sork
Office: TLSB 4141
Research: Evolutionary & conservation genomics of California oaks
Erick Zerecero Marin
Advisor: Paul Barber
Madeleine Zuercher
Advisor: Gregory Grether and Debra Shier
Office: 4329 Life Science Building (LSB)
Research: Behavioral ecology, conservation, mammalian evolution, field biology
Regina Zweng
Advisor: Peggy Fong
Office: 4111 Life Science Building (LSB)
Research: Impacts of eutrophication on marine and estuarine ecosystems