ECOEVOMATICS - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Principal Investigator
- Assistant Professor of Ecological Bioinformatics at the University of Maine
Andy is Assistant Professor of Ecological Bioinformatics at the University of Maine in the School of Biology and Ecology, and the Maine Center for Genetics in the Environment. His work focuses on discovering general processes that drive the origin and maintenance of biodiversity using ecological and evolutionary theory in concert with novel data streams from large-scale inventories of the diversity of life. These inventories are increasingly enabled by next-generation sequencing methods such as eDNA and metabarcoding. Much of this work has been based in Hawai`i, with recent expansion into arid and costal ecosystems. Andy is committed to diversity and equity in science, open and reproducible research, and the success of his students and colleagues. Before joining the University of Maine, Andy was a postdoc at the Santa Fe Institute, and before that he completed his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley.
Beth is a PhD student in Ecology and Environmental Sciences through the School of Biology and Ecology at the University of Maine. She earned her Bachelors of Science in Biology at Oregon State University with a focus in Marine Biology, and studied adaptive and evolutionary genomics, community ecology, and thermal stress responses in regards to intertidal invertebrate and algal species. At the University of Maine, Beth is focused on working with eDNA as an aquatic monitoring tool and joining efforts to understand the continuing impacts of dams on Maine fisheries and river ecology. Beth is committed to equity and improving communication between scientists and non-scientists, and hopes to work with local and indigenous communities in Maine. Other projects she is interested include biological impacts of microplastics, subtidal ecology, and improving data accessibility and metadata records in STEM fields.
Heather is a PhD student in the EcoEvoMatics Lab. She has worked all over the country as a naturalist and educator, but is never more at home than when on Maine's rocky coastline. She got her MS at San Francisco State University working with biofilms on microplastics as a student in the lab of Dr. Ed Carpenter. More recently, she has coordinated environmental monitoring research at an environmental research non-profit organization in Blue Hill, ME. She brings with her a passion for understanding coastal processes and a strong desire to sustain natural resources and increase climate change resiliency in the state of Maine.
Isaac is majoring in Computer Science and is interested in video game development and data analysis in reference to machine learning. He is actively working on the development of the DNA barcoding reference database for Maine's marine and aquatic species. He is Co-President of the GDG Club and works at the UMaine Esports Arena.
Isaac's core research involves characterizing and developing models to explain the distribution of genetic variation in ecological communities. A related focus is to develop models of how biodiversity accumulates in ecological communities that integrate over multiple levels of biological organization, including species abundances, genetic diversities, and phylogenetic relationships. Before coming to Maine, Isaac obtained his PhD from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York under the supervision of Mike Hickerson. He then spent two years as a postdoc with Helene Morlon at Institut de Biologie de l'Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, where he developed theory and models of island biodiversity genomics. Isaac is a firm believer in Bigfoot.