People

Kelly Finke
Graduate student
Kelly is a PhD student in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. She is interested in collective social behavior in humans and animals and in applying theoretical and computational approaches to relevant social contexts, particularly climate action and political polarization. As an undergraduate at Swarthmore College, Kelly studied Computational…
Daniel Jorge
Graduate Student

Daniel is interested in how individual-level (micro) processes lead to emerging patterns and dynamics in ecology and evolution. He has a bachelor degree in Physics and is currently in his Master's in the Institute of Theoretical Physics of UNESP, Brazil. There, he is investigating the mechanisms that drive the aggregation patterns of living…

Sebastián Michel-Mata
Graduate Student
Sebastián is interested in cultural evolution and evolutionary social dynamics in human and animal groups. Through formal models, he studies the emergence of group-level behaviors when social and cultural traits shape the individual's interactions. His work combines questions and theory from social sciences and biology and uses mathematical and…
Yuriy Pichugin
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Yuriy is interested in the evolution of multicellular life cycles - how simple unicellular ancestors evolved into cell colonies, and how these colonies developed multiple complex adaptations, which led them to become multicellular organisms. Besides this topic, he worked on evolutionary game theory, mathematical oncology, and eco-evolutionary…
Merlijn Staps
Graduate Student
Merlijn is interested in integrating theoretical and experimental approaches to understand biological complexity, particularly in the context of organismal development. He received his Master’s degrees in Mathematics and Biology from Utrecht University. During his Master’s, Merlijn worked on a variety of topics, ranging from single-cell genomics…
Harrison Watson
Graduate Student
Harrison is broadly interested in carbon and nutrient cycling within savanna soils, particularly what role herbivory has in determining the flow of carbo and other nutrients. He recently graduated from Jackson State University with a Bachelor’s in Marine Biology where he studied mitochondrial genomics using species of crustaceans native to the…
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