Our Team
Elise Zipkin
Red Cedar Distinguished Professor
Department of Integrative Biology
Program Director
Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior (EEB)
Michigan State University
Current Lab Members
Bruna Amaral
PhD Student
Bruna’s research focuses on understanding how birds cope with the challenge of surviving in the Anthropocene. She is passionate about using quantitative methods to investigate a variety of individual, population, and community-level processes to identify the underlying causes of demographic declines and to inform conservation efforts. She is particularly interested in tropical bird communities, which are both extremely diverse and threatened, yet remain understudied. During her PhD, Bruna will be a part of an NPS project investigating how forest bird populations in parks in the Eastern US have changed in the past fifteen years, and the importance of protected habitats in conserving these avian communities.
Samuel Ayebare
PhD Candidate
Sam’s research focuses on understanding the factors that influence species abundance, distributions, and persistence. Sam is developing statistical models to estimate species abundance patterns relative to climate and industrial activities while accounting for interacting dynamics of co-occurring species. Prior to MSU, Sam worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) Uganda program for nearly a decade, estimating baseline levels of biodiversity including the impacts of anthropogenic factors on wildlife. Sam received his MS from the University of Rhode Island. He is a recipient of the WCS Beinecke African Scholarship and the WWF Train Fellowship for Aspiring Faculty.
Michael Belitz
Postdoctoral Researcher
Michael is a global change biologist interested in developing and applying computational pipelines to scale understanding of how insects are responding to anthropogenic change. At MSU, Michael is integrating multiple data sources to identify climate and land use drivers of butterfly population and community dynamics in the Midwest. Michael earned a BA from Knox College and a MS from Central Michigan University where he worked on research to inform the conservation of the endangered Poweshiek skipperling. Michael completed his PhD at the University of Florida, where he quantified the effects of climate and urbanization on moth phenology and abundance across larval and adult life stages.
Sydney Ceyzyk
Undergraduate Researcher
Sydney is an undergraduate researcher interested in macrosystems ecology, global change biology, and community ecology. She is currently working on her BS in environmental science & management with a minor in computational mathematics, science and engineering. Sydney is developing an independent research project examining correlations between anthropogenic threats in animal communities to assess global patterns of at-risk mammals, birds, and amphibians. Sydney enjoys learning, working with her peers, and team science research projects. She plans to pursue a PhD in quantitative ecology or forestry.
Chia Hsieh
Postdoctoral Researcher
Chia is a community ecologist interested in bridging macroecology and macroevolution to understand the distribution of biodiversity. As the MSU Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior (EEB), Chia is investigating how ecological and evolutionary processes shape global patterns of avian ecological strategies under the mentorship of Elise Zipkin and Fred Janzen. Her PhD research at Rice University evaluated how evolutionary history and environmental variability have shaped the phylogenetic, functional, and interaction diversity of tropical mammals worldwide. Chia previously completed an MS and a BS at the National Taiwan University and worked at the Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica.
Wendy Leuenberger
PhD Candidate
Wendy is broadly interested in using quantitative methods to understand and predict species dynamics and determine appropriate conservation actions. Wendy is developing data integration methods to evaluate the causes and consequence of environmental change on wildlife populations and communities. Wendy received her MS from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, where she studied avian responses to experimental ice storms and developed a lesson plan for high school students. She then worked as a biometrician at the University of Kentucky for three years. Wendy is an NRT-IMPACTS Fellow (NSF Research Traineeship – Integrated training Model in Plant And Compu-Tational Sciences).
Sally Martinez
PhD Student
Sally is interested in population and community modeling to address critical questions in conservation biology, particularly in the context of vertebrate ecology. Sally received BS and MS degrees from Purdue University, where she studied wildlife ecology with a quantitative concentration. For her masters research, Sally developed Bayesian occupancy models using historical data to inform the conservation of imperiled bat species. As a PhD student, Sally will continue her work developing modeling approaches to exploit long-term and historic legacy data to assess, predict, and forecast approaches to protect threatened and declining species and communities.
Sarah Saunders
Adjunct Scholar
Sarah’s research focuses on declining and threatened wildlife populations to improve recovery efforts. Sarah is a Quantitative Ecologist in the Science Division at the National Audubon Society and a former postdoc in the lab. She continues to collaborate with the lab on a number of projects, including the development of models to tease apart the factors causing the decline of the eastern North American monarch population. Sarah completed her PhD at the University of Minnesota where she studied the endangered Great Lakes piping plover population. Sarah enjoys working with long-term data sets and advanced statistical models to tackle conservation problems.
Peter Williams
Postdoctoral Researcher
Peter is a community ecologist broadly interested in macroecology, biogeography, and tropical ecology. While at MSU, Peter is working on a variety of different projects including an evaluation of how drought affects tropical tree communities (with collaborator Natalia Umana at University of Michigan) and an analysis examining global diversity patterns of vertebrate communities before and during the Anthropocene. Peter completed his PhD at the University of Montana where he studied tropical plant-animal interactions in Southeast Asia. Before that, he worked in China on a Fulbright Fellowship studying golden snub-nosed monkeys.
Former Lab Members
Postdoctoral Researchers
Christie Bahlai, 2016-2017
Current Position: Associate Professor, Kent State University
Courtney Davis, 2021-2022
Current Position: Quantitative Ecologist, Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Graziella DiRenzo, 2016-2019
Current Position: Assistant Unit Leader, USGS Co-op at University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Jeffrey Doser, 2022-2024
Current Position: Assistant Professor, North Carolina State University
Neil Gilbert, 2022-2024
Current Position: Assistant Professor, Oklahoma State University
Sam Rossman, 2014-2018
Current Position: Research Scientist, Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute
Sarah Saunders, 2016-2019
Current Position: Quantitative Ecologist, National Audubon Society
Erin Zylstra, 2019-2021
Current Position: Quantitative Ecologist, Tucson Audubon Society
Graduate Students
Acacia Ackles, co-advised with Emily Dolson, PhD (2022)
Current Position: Assistant Professor, Lawrence University
Kayla Davis, PhD (2024)
Current Position: Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Saskatchewan
Jeffrey Doser, co-advised with Andy Finley, PhD (2022)
Current Position: Assistant Professor, North Carolina State University
Matthew Farr, PhD (2021)
Current Position: Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Washington
Allison Sussman, MS (2017)
Current Position: Database and GIS Specialist, USGS Eastern Ecological Science Center
Alexander Wright, PhD (2021)
Current Position: Landscape Science Coordinator, US Fish and Wildlife Service
Visiting Students
Caroline Blommel, Postbac Researcher (2020-2021)
Current Position: MS student, Colorado State University
Xabier Cabodevilla, Visiting PhD student from Spain (2019)
Current Position: Postdoctoral Researcher, Forest Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia
Saba Manzoor, Visiting PhD student from Pakistan (2018-2019)
Current Position: Assistant Professor, University of Sialkot
Shahla Nargis, Visiting PhD student from Pakistan (2018-2019)
Current Position: Research Associate, Sichuan Agricultural University, China
Valentina Oberosler, Visiting PhD student from Italy (2018)
Current Position: Postdoctoral Researcher, The Science Museum at Trento (MUSE)
José Ribeiro, Visiting PhD student from Brazil (2016-2017)
Current Position: Quantitative Ecologist, Rainforest Connection
Undergraduates
Vince Nguyen (Professorial Assistant, 2017-2019)
Weston Barton (REU Student, 2018)
Daniel Greeson (Professorial Assistant, 2016-2018)