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 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 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 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 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’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 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.