People

Tsun Fung Au (Tom) Postdoc

Tom is a global change ecologist who is interested in climate change impacts on terrestrial ecosystems. Under the supervision of Drs., Inés Ibáñez, Peter Reich, and me, he will be studying the complex responses of species, communities, and forest ecosystems to rapid climate change with implications on global carbon cycles, species conservation, and forest sustainability. 

google scholar

Juan Manuel Cely

MSc student

Juan Manuel is a biologist interested in plant functional ecology. In 2023, he completed his BSc at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, where he assessed functional trait variation at local scales in a Tropical Dry Forest. He is interested in understanding how intraspecific trait variation relates to performance and abundance of seedling tree species.

Minh Chau N. Ho

PhD student (co-advisor)

Chau is interested in linkages between functional traits and growth and survival in trees, particularly using architectural traits. She is also interested in demographic trade-offs and mechanistic trait models, and is co-advised by Dr. Annette Ostling.

Tomás Fuentes-Rohwer PhD student

Tomás holds a master’s degree from the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs program and previously served as a lead ecologist at Meristem, LLC in Bloomington, Indiana, where he also completed his BS in Biology. In 2023, he joined our lab with a specific focus on investigating forest recovery following extreme droughts and hurricanes in Puerto Rico.

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Andrés González-Melo Postdoc

Andres is a plant ecologist interested in studying how functional traits, particularly wood traits, shape tree ecological strategies, and forest dynamics. He is also interested in the links between plant traits and ecological restoration.

google scholar

Samuel Schaffer-Morrison  

PhD student

Sam obtained his master’s degree at the University of Michigan at the School for Environment and Sustainability, where he studied the role of mycorrhizal networks on seedling recruitment in Michigan. Before that, he completed his BSc at George Washington University. Sam is interested in forest ecology, functional traits, and mycorrhizal associations.

google scholar

Manar Talab

MSc student

Manar is a first year masters student in the Frontiers program. She did her bachelors at Princeton University and conducted her thesis on the impacts of mutualism on foundational species recovery with Seagrass and Clams in North Carolina. She is interested in how climate change impacts species interactions and larger ecosystem function. Manar is primarily interested in mutualism, climate change, and habitat restoration.

Peter Williams

Postdoc

Peter is interested in community ecology. As a Ph.D. student, he worked in the tropical forests of Malaysian Borneo, examining the role of seed predators and frugivores on plant communities. As a postdoctoral researcher co-advised by Elise Zipkin and me, he will be working on a project studying tree responses to rainfall variation in tropical dry forests in the neotropics.

google scholar

Cotové-Antioquia (Tropical Dry Forest):

Roy González-M, Maribel, Verónica Marín, Julieth Villaba, Susana, and Alvaro Idarraga.

Colorados-Bolivar (Tropical Dry Forest)

Felipe Rojas, Juan Manuel Cely, Beatriz Salgado, Juan Gabriel, Esperanza Ruiz, and María Paula Cuervo