Doctoral students are integral to collaboration on research with faculty members in their labs and with fellow graduate students and undergraduates. These opportunities allow students to benefit from our faculty’s expertise while gaining experience mentoring and teaching. The close-knit community of students in biology, biochemistry and molecular biology, and chemistry builds collaboration across disciplines both in the lab and in the field, which has led to exciting research.
Joseph Nelsen
Research interests: agroecology, insect food webs, plant-insect interactions
Adviser: Kate Mathis
Daley O’Keefe
Research interests: Invasion ecology, chemical ecology
Adviser: Kate Mathis
Maxwell Olson
Research interests: Morphological evolution in snake-like and burrowing lizards
Adviser: Philip Bergmann
Thomas Roehl
Research interests: Evolutionary development of mushrooms (how mushroom forms change over time), developmental biology of mushrooms (how mushroom growth is controlled), genetics and evolution of Lentinus tigrinus
Adviser: David Hibbett
Liam Cleary
Research interests: Secondary Metabolism and Population Genomics of the fungus Basidiobolus
Adviser: Javier Tabima-Restrepo
Mahima Gupta
Adviser: Jackie Dresch
Diego Borges-Rivera
Research interest: Chromosomal looping, cis-regulatory elements, and retrotransposable elements
Adviser: Jacqueline Dresch
Reynaldo Ponce Almeri
Research Interests: Gene Regulation, Synthetic biology and Genomics
Adviser: Nathan Ahlgren
Lauren Parry
Research Interests: Fungal Genomics & Secondary Metabolism
Adviser: Javier Tabima-Restrepo
Behnoush Rafiei Nia
Research interests: Developmental Biology, Cell Signaling pathways, Nervous system evolution
Adviser: Neva Meyer
Fatemeh Noori
Adviser: Chandra Jack
Ciera Heinrich
Research interests: Beneficial insects in urban farms/gardens
Adviser: Kaitlyn Mathis
Ella Sandford
Research interests: Plant-fungi interactions
Adviser: Chandra Jack
Evan Hubbs
Research interests: Reptile predator ecology
Adviser: Philip Bergmann
Darian Madere
Research interests: Iron adaptation in the marine picocyanobacteria Synechococcus
Adviser: Nathan Ahlgren
Achyuthan Srikanthan
Adviser: Philip Bergmann