People

Current lab members

 

Molly Schumer is an assistant professor in Biology. She is interested in understanding the ways in which hybridization impacts genetic and evolutionary processes.

 

 

Stepfanie Aguillon is a Stanford Science Fellow and incoming postdoc in the lab interested in using hybrid zones and genomic tools to understand the speciation process. To learn more about her research and find copies of her publications, visit her website.

 

 

JJ Baczenas is a life science technician in the lab. He is interested in using genomic techniques and next gen sequencing to investigate how ecological pressures affect genetic processes. JJ completed his undergraduate in marine biology from Hawai’i Pacific University in 2019. Before joining the lab, he worked for the University of Wisconsin researching a variety of pathogens, including SIV and SARS-CoV-2 using next gen sequencing.

 

 

 

 

 

Shreya Banerjee is our lab manager and leads many research projects in the lab. She is interested in using genomic techniques to answer evolutionary and ecological questions.

 

 

Tris Dodge is a graduate student interested in how hybridization can enable rapid adaptation, particularly in response to human-driven environmental change. Tris wants to combine molecular data with field studies to understand how genome structure interacts with ecology to shape the functional consequences of hybridization.

 

 

 

Theresa Gunn is our fish room manager.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Victoria Grant is a graduate student in the lab interested in investigating patterns of genetic diversity and observing its effect on wild populations’ risk for extinction. She plans to use these patterns to assist conservation efforts aimed at the preservation of species.

 

 

 

Quinn Langdon is an NSF Rules of Life postdoc in the lab who spent her graduate career thinking about yeast hybrids in beer, wine, cider, and the wild. She is interested in hybrids across all life, and the evolutionary pressures and genomic consequences of hybridization.

 

 

Ben Moran is a graduate student in the lab who is  interested in how patterns of gene flow change across the spectrum from homogeneous populations to well-diverged species. He plans to connect the evolution of genomes under gene flow to mechanisms of reproductive isolation, and apply this knowledge to the conservation of genetic diversity in threatened populations.

 

 

Cheyenne Payne is a graduate student using genomic and proteomic tools to explore whether hybridization facilitates adaptation to environmental stress in parental species and hybrid populations.

 

 

 

Dan Powell is a postdoc in the lab interested in hybridization and sexual selection.

 

 

 

Gabe Preising is a graduate student interested in using bioinformatic and computational techniques to study how hybridization influences the evolution of behavior

 

 

 

Ken Thompson is a Human Frontiers in Science  postdoc in the lab and is interested in using field experiments to disentangle the various forms of selection underlying hybrid incompatibilities.

 

 

Erden Tumurbaatar is a life science technician in the lab, interested in using molecular biology techniques in broad range of projects in the lab to understand how the hybridization between populations effects their genomic makeup. Erden completed her undergraduate degree from Georgia Tech in 2017. Before joining the lab, she worked in a R&D laboratory in genomic sequencing.

 

Lab alumni

 

 

Dani Blakkan was our lab and fish room manager from 2019-2020.