Former lab members.
They escaped with their careers intact.



Ariadna Morales

Ariadna completed her doctorate in July of 2018, and authored or co-authored ten manuscripts during her time at OSU. After working at the AMNH as a postdoc with Frank Burbrink and Nancy Simmons, Ariadna is now a part of the Bat1K genome project. More information about her background and research interests can be found on her website.

Greg Wheeler

Greg earned his doctorate by completing a genomics project on Sarracenia alata. He is currently a bioinformatician in the Institute for Genomic Medicine at Nationwide Children's Hospital. Greg is a great colleague, and we wish he was still around to contribute to our research. But helping to prevent cancer is important too.

Tara Pelletier

Tara recently took a faculty position at Radford University, where we know that she'll be a great professor. Tara is an expert statistician, creative with analytical methods, and is also a great field biologist when given the chance. She also writes phenomenal papers!

Tara's web page

Anahi Espindola

Anahi visited my lab when it was in Louisiana, while she was a Ph D student with Nadir Alvarez. After completing a Postdoc with Dave Tank and Jack Sullivan at the University of Idaho, Anahi accepted a faculty position at the University of Maryland. Checkout her research website.

Anahi's website




Maggie Hanes

Maggie Hanes (ne Koopman) is currently the Director of the Herbarium and an Associate Professor at Eastern Michigan University. She helped to develop the Sarracenia alata project as my post-doc, and was instrumental in collecting data from its microbiome.

Maggie's web page

Amanda Zellmer

Amanda is currently an Assistant Professor at Occidental College. Amanda worked on Sarracenia alata phylogeography, and developed protocols for DNA sequencing as my postdoc.

Amanda's web page

Ysin-Erica Tsai

Erica is currently a Postdoc with Jason McLachlan at the University of Notre Dame. She worked on a phylogeographic investigation of Salix melanopsis and developed PhyloGeoViz as my postdoc.

Erica's web page

Michael Gruenstaeudl

Michael is currently a researcher at the Free University of Berlin. He developed the P2C2M R package and worked on the Community Trees project when he was in my lab.

Michael's blog





John McVay

John McVay did a postdoc with Paul Manos at Duke University, and currently works for the University of Florida. John worked on phylogenetics of the Thamnophiini as a graduate student and was the first student to join the Carstens Lab. We desperately miss John's abilities in the lab, and his natural aptitude with acronyms!

Sarah Hird

Sarah Hird developed PRGmatic and explored bird gut microbiomes as a graduate student. After a postdoctoral position with Johnathan Eisen at the University of California-Davis, she was hired by the University of Connecticut where she is currently an Assistant Professor.

Sara's website

Noah Reid

Noah Reid developed bGMYC and posterior predictive tests of the multispecies coalescent model while a member of my lab. After a postdoctoral position Andrew Whitehead at the University of California-Davis, Noah accepted a Research Assistant Professor position at the University of Connecticut.

Noah's website

Tereza Thomé

Dr. Thomé earned her doctorate at the Universidade Estadual Paulista in Rio Claro, Brazil, where she worked on several projects related to the phylogeography of toads. She's currently working on assembling and analyzing big data sets as part of the Dimensions of Biodiversity project.




Lisa Barrow

Lisa joined the lab in the Fall of 2018 as one of the inaugural postdocs in OSU's President's Postdoctoral Scholars Program. Lisa is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico.

Lisa's website

Manolo Perez

Manolo is currently a PhD student at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) in Brazil. He is interested in the evolutionary history of cacti in Brazilian Caatinga and Cerrado. His work uses tools from population and phylogenetics, as well as bioinformatics.

Manolo's website

Isabel Bonatelli

Isabel is currently a PhD student at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) in Brazil. She works with phylogeography and population genetics in species of cacti associated with Quaternary refugia. She developed new RAD-seq SSR markers for cactus species and also ABC analysis when she was in our lab.

Isabel's Research Gate page

Gustavo Silva-Arias

Gustavo is in his final year as a Ph D student with Loreta Freitas at the PPGBM-UFRGS in Brazil. He visited us in the Summer-Fall of 2015 to develop part of his dissertation work about genetic consequences of coastal colonization process in Petunia.




Cole Thompson

Cole joined the lab in the Fall of 2017. After learning R, she's developed an analysis pipeline to compare genetic diversity in protected areas to that in unprotected areas. Her work looks as if it will have important implications to conservation, so check back in Spring of '19 for her manuscript. She's the first MS student in the history of the Carstens lab!

David Sneddon

David joined the lab in the Spring of 2018 and was awarded an Undergraduate Research Fellowship from the OSU Office of Undergraduate Research. His senior thesis explored the phylogeography of microsnails from the Pacific Northwest. He is currently in a Ph D program under Jack Sullivan at the University of Idaho.

Drew Duckett

Before joining our lab in the Spring of 2018, Drew earned a Master's degree in Gavin Naylor's lab and worked at the Morton Arboretum. Drew's dissertation work developed bioinformatics tools for posterior predictive simulation and genomics of Microtus richarsoni. After graduating, Drew went to work as a bioinformatician at Northwestern University Hospital.

Connor Lang

Connor joined the lab in the Spring of 2018. He worke with Megan Smith on microsnails, and spent the summer helping Ben Stone collect Penstemon in the Pacific Northwest. Connor is currently in an MS program at the University of Akron.




Megan Smith

Megan joined the lab in the Fall of 2015 after graduating from the University of Mississippi. She worked in Brice Noonan's lab as an undergrad, and is working on a comparative phylogeography project in the Pacific Northwest Temperate Rainforest. Megan is currently a postdoctoral research in Matt Hahn's lab. You can find more information about her research interests on Megan's website.

Emanuel Fonseca

Emanuel joined the lab in the Fall of 2018 after he completed a Master's degree at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil, working in the Garda lab. His dissertation project explored the role of abiotic environmental conditions on the origin and diversification of species in the Dry Diagonal of South American. Emanuel is currently a postdoc at the University of Arizona in the Gutenkunst lab. More information about his research is available here.

Jamin Wieringa

Jamin was co-advised by Lisle Gibbs. His dissertation project investigated how various biomarkers could be used to source population of migratory tree bats (including Lasiurus spp. and Lasionycteris noctivagans) that are killed at Ohio windfarms. After a productive time as a Ph D student, Jamin has recently joined the USFWS as a geneticist at the Southwestern Native Aquatic Resources and Recovery Center. More information is available on Jamin's website.

Ivy Larkin

Ivy was part of the EEOB Next-gen REU while she was a student at Columbus State. She transferred to OSU for the Fall of 2018, and is currently working with Lisa Barrow on a project involving genetic diversity of amphibians and squamates.


WE ARE EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGISTS.

We make inferences about the history of species and ecological communities using genetic, environmental and morphological data. We conduct investigations in a range of organisms: bats, insects, carnivorous plants, salamanders, willows, spiders, snails, slugs and viruses.

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