{"id":47,"date":"2019-02-07T15:31:53","date_gmt":"2019-02-07T20:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/departments\/template-example\/?page_id=47"},"modified":"2026-09-01T11:02:34","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T15:02:34","slug":"graduate-students","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/departments\/biology\/people\/graduate-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctoral Students"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Doctoral students are integral to collaboration on research with faculty members <a href=\"https:\/\/www.clarku.edu\/departments\/biology\/research\/facilities\/\" aria-label=\"in their labs\">in their labs<\/a> and with fellow graduate students and undergraduates. These opportunities allow students to benefit from our faculty\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Joseph Nelsen<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Research interests: agroecology, insect food webs, plant-insect interactions<\/p>\n<p>Adviser: Kate Mathis<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Daley O&#8217;Keefe<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Research interests: Invasion ecology, chemical ecology<\/p>\n<p>Adviser: Kate Mathis<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Maxwell Olson<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Research interests: Morphological evolution in snake-like and burrowing lizards<\/p>\n<p>Adviser: Philip Bergmann<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Thomas Roehl<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>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<\/p>\n<p>Adviser: David Hibbett<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Liam Cleary<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Research interests: Secondary Metabolism and Population Genomics of the fungus Basidiobolus<\/p>\n<p>Adviser: Javier Tabima-Restrepo<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Mahima Gupta<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Adviser: Jackie Dresch<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Diego Borges-Rivera<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Research interest: Chromosomal looping, cis-regulatory elements, and retrotransposable elements<\/p>\n<p>Adviser: Jacqueline Dresch<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Reynaldo Ponce Almeri<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Research Interests: Gene Regulation, Synthetic biology and Genomics<\/p>\n<p>Adviser: Nathan Ahlgren<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Lauren Parry<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Research Interests: Fungal Genomics &amp; Secondary Metabolism<\/p>\n<p>Adviser: Javier Tabima-Restrepo<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Behnoush Rafiei Nia<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Research interests: Developmental Biology, Cell Signaling pathways, Nervous system evolution<\/p>\n<p>Adviser: Neva Meyer<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Fatemeh Noori<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Adviser: Chandra Jack<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Ciera Heinrich<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Research interests: Beneficial insects in urban farms\/gardens<\/p>\n<p>Adviser: Kaitlyn Mathis<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Ella Sandford<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Research interests: Plant-fungi interactions<\/p>\n<p>Adviser: Chandra Jack<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Evan Hubbs<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Research interests: Reptile predator ecology<\/p>\n<p>Adviser: Philip Bergmann<\/p>\n<p><em><strong>Darian Madere<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Research interests: Iron adaptation in the marine picocyanobacteria Synechococcus<\/p>\n<p>Adviser: Nathan Ahlgren<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Achyuthan Srikanthan<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Adviser: Philip Bergmann<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2019s 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"parent":78,"menu_order":13,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-47","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.7 (Yoast SEO v24.8) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Doctoral Students | Department of Biology | Clark University<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Learn about the biology doctoral students at Clark University, their areas of research, and how to contact them.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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