Irby Lovette just began a three-year term as the incoming Director of the Cornell Museum of Vertebrates, the home of the research collections that are co-located with the Lab in the Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity. The CUMV is small in terms of staff — just three additional professionals…
Warmest of congratulations to Nick for successfully defending his PhD thesis yesterday! Nick by the numbers (at least some of them): 5.2 years as a PhD student (1 year below the average time-to-completion); 1/1 on postdoc applications with his independent NSF award to work at UC Berkeley starting in January;…
A paper resulting from Benjamin Van Dooren’s undergraduate honors thesis is out in the latest issue of Molecular Ecology where is is accompanied by a great commentary by Reto Buri. Ben did this honors project in our lab and went on to receive a Marshall Scholarship for his PhD at…
Not related to research but too good not to post here: Postdoc Jen Walsh using duct tape to keep a bandage on the foot of her pet duck:
Irby Lovette was honored with Cornell’s Kendall S. Carpenter Memorial Advising Award during this past graduation weekend. The awards, which are given each year to four faculty from across the campus and which are Cornell’s highest recognition for advising, underscore of the importance of engagement with undergraduates and are based…
Warmest of congratulations to all of the 2017 Cornell graduates — we’ve known so many of you, and shared some amazing adventures in the classroom, laboratory, and at far-flung places around the globe. Andrew and Sarah: we love the caps!!!!
Congratulations to Petra (aka Dr. Deane-Coe) for graduating this past weekend with her PhD. It was very fun to see her walk on stage and get outfitted with the red hood that represents this high-level professional accomplishment!
Grad student Petra Deane-Coe presented her dissertation seminar at the EEB departmental seminar slot on April 24th. The title of her talk was “Genomic signatures of recent adaptive divergence in the swamp sparrow (Melospiza georgiana)” and her seminar itself was a model of clarity and polished presentation, on top of…
Congratulations to Nick Mason for being recognized as a recipient of the Stephen and Margaret Russell Distinguished Teaching Award from the College of Arts and Sciences. This award celebrates those “who have demonstrated their devotion to teaching, where teaching is understood to include classroom presence, preparation and administration, student counseling…
We are fortunate that Daniel Hooper has been awarded one of this year’s Rose Postdoctoral Fellowships from the Lab of Ornithology! Daniel is currently finishing up his PhD at the University of Chicago, where he is working with his advisor Trevor Price on the evolution of chromosomal inversions and their…
Congratulations to Stepfanie Aguillon for passing her oral A exam and thereby advancing to PhD candidacy! As is typical of this academic rite-of-passage, Stepfanie’s exam covered a variety of topics related (closely or distantly) to her dissertation work on the genomics and behavioral ecology of hybridization. It turned into a…
Warmest of congratulations to Sahas Barve–a stalwart member of our greater lab group–for successfully defending his PhD on Thursday!
Congratulations to Natalie Hoffmeister for passing her PhD candidacy exam (here we call it the “A exam”) in great shape on Thursday. Like all A exams in the Field of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Natalie’s was an oral exam that covered a wide (and unpredictable) range of topics, in this…
Congratulations to Leo Campagna on his promotion to the academic title of Research Associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Leo came to the Lab as a postdoc in 2013, and in the years since he has spearheaded an innovative research program on the genomics of speciation in Sporophila seedeaters,…
Ben and Maria are Merrill Presidential Scholars: congratulations to seniors Ben Van Doren and Maria Smith for being honored today as Merrill Presidential Scholars, which means that among other leadership contributions and accomplishments they each rank academically in the top 1% of their soon-to-be graduating class. A super-neat aspect of…
Congrats to grad student Jake Berv who advanced to PhD candidacy today by passing his qualifying exam (which we call the “A” exam here). Next time you see him, be sure to ask Jake about the major constituents of ‘Cole’s Law.’
Congrats to two lab group alumni: two students whom we knew through all four years of their Cornell experience are heading off to work on birds via their new PhD programs in the Fall. Kathryn Grabenstein will be at the University of Colorado in the lab of our own Dr.…
Shawn Billerman is the recipient of an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship and we are all accordingly very excited about his forthcoming return to Cornell! In the Fall Shawn will begin working here on the genomics of hybrids zones in the Great Plains, based in part on the CUMV’s large collection of…
Congratulations to Dustin Rubenstein, who was just awarded tenure at Columbia University! Dustin is one our our group’s longest-term colleagues and alumni, dating to his PhD years here at Cornell when we worked together on starling evolution, the Kenya field course, and much more. Here is a throw-back photo of…
Current postdoc David Toews just got the fantastic news that he has been awarded a two-year Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship! This very prestigious award from the Canadian government goes only to the very top Canadian scholars across all disciplines in science and medicine. We are very excited that David plans to…