Mostly up to date (as of July 2014)……
Kimball-Braun Lab, Spring 2014. Top row (left to right): Gabe Jerkins, Edward Braun, Nick Persons, Rebecca Kimball, Joni Wright, Akanksha Pandey, Brooke Dayton, Jess Sabo, Jessica Oswald, Tania Chavarria, Ping Huang, Kin Han, and Kelly Meicklejohn. Missing are Melany Danielson and Ambuj Kumar.
CURRENT LAB MEMBERS (for former members, see below)
POSTDOC
Pete Hosner recently joined the lab from the University of Kansas, where he completed his PhD working with Rob Moyle. Pete will be working on galliform phylogenetics. Click here to see more about Pete (and here as well).
GRADUATE STUDENTS
The graduate students in the lab do a diverse range of projects. I believe graduate students (particularly PhD students) should develop their own research projects, and take the primary role in determining the specific questions and approaches they use. I see my role as that of assisting and guiding, rather than directing. In addition to their main projects, many of the students in the lab are working on side projects. While I feel strongly that these should not distract from completing degrees, students have found these projects to be useful to develop additional skills and gain additional publications during their graduate career.
Kin Han (PhD). Kin completed a MS on the phylogeny of Caprimulgidae, working with Mike Braun at the Smithsonian Institution and the University of Maryland. She is working on Brown-headed Nuthatches – primarily on population genetics, but one component is also looking at group relatedness and parentage. Click here for Kin’s web site (and more about her here).
Ping Huang (PhD – co-advised with Colette St. Mary). Ping is interested in personality syndromes, and is focusing on Northern Cardinals..
Joni Wright (PhD). Joni is looking at chemosensory systems and olfaction in New World vultures. Her project involves looking at the genetics of chemoreceptors as well as the physiology of olfaction.
Tania Chavarria-Pizarro (PhD). Tania is studying population genetics and adaptive variation in Mangrove Warblers in Costa Rica.
Ambuj Kumar (MS – co-advised with Edward Braun). Ambuj is interested in molecular evolution and computer programming. See what he has done here and here.
There are currently several other graduate students working in the lab:
Jessica Oswald (PhD) who is working with David Steadman (FLMNH); see more about Jess on her website.
Mariana Villegas (PhD) who is working with John Blake (Wildlife and TCD); see more about Mariana here.
Kaan Kerman (PhD) who is working with Katie Seiving (Wildlife)
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
The undergraduate students in the lab work in a variety of capacities. Most new students are encouraged to work on a variety of projects, until they are comfortable with the basics (particularly for molecular biology work). Students that have performed well and are motivated often begin to work independently once they are familiar with the lab. The degree of independence depends upon the students interests, abilities, and the time they can devote to a project. Some students take a portion of an existing project and collect all the data associated with that portion. Still others work even more independently, and actively participate in developing the project idea, methods, analyses, and write up.
Michael Kusnick is a Biotechnology major, and he is working on galliform phylogenetics, particularly helping with amplifying and assembling complete mitochondrial sequences.
Sarah Hyde is interested in evolutionary biology, and is working on galliform phylogenetics. She is focusing on gallopheasants, which includes many of the typical pheasants that are common in zoos.
FORMER LAB MEMBERS
POSTDOCS
Kelly Meiklejohn worked on galliform phylogenetics. Kelly completed her PhD in 2012 where she studied the evolution and forensic utility of a group of flesh flies at Wollongong University in Australia. While working in our lab, she published several papers (Meicklejohn et al. 2014; Sun et al. in press), and there are others that should be published soon.
Tamaki Yuri worked on the EarlyBird project (too many papers to list! check out the EarlyBird website). She is now the collections manager at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History at the University of Oklahoma.
GRADUATE STUDENTS
Ning Wang (PhD, supervised by Zhengwang Zhang at Beijing Normal University). As part of her PhD training, Ning spent two years working at the University of Florida. Several publications have resulted, at least in part, from her work at UF (Kimball et al. 2013, Wang et al. 2013, Wang and Kimball 2012, Wang et al. 2012). She is currently a faculty at Hainan Normal University.
Clare Rittschoff (PhD, supervised by Jane Brockmann). Clare completed her PhD on the mating system of Nephila clavipes (golden orb-weaving spider). She went to the Univ. of Illinois to do a postdoc with Gene Robinson.
Swati Patel (Currently completing a PhD in Math-Bio at UC Davis). She has a manuscripted accepted based on the work she did at UF (Patel et al. 2013).
Jena Chojnowski (PhD; supervised by Edward Braun). Jena is looking for genes that affect sex-determination in red-eared sliders (Trachemys scripta). Jena had initially come to our lab as a technician on the EarlyBird project, and she remained involved in that project, first-authoring a paper on gene evolution as part of the EarlyBird project (Chojnowski et al. 2008)
Jordan Smith (MS, supervised by Edward Braun). Jordan developed 40 additional loci to examine relationships among paleognathous birds (Smith et al. 2013, and Kimball et al. 2009). This was initially supported by an REU supplement, and then completed as a MS degree at UF. She also assisted on developing micrsoatellites for nuthataches (Haas et al. 2009).
Natalie Wright (MS, supervised by David Steadman). Although Natalie is advised by David Steadman (Florida Museum of Natural History), she does some of her research in the lab. She is looking at morphological and molecular differences of bird species found on both Trinidad and Tobago.
Sarah Haas (MS). Sarah worked on population genetics of Brown-headed Nuthatch, a species in the southeastern United States that has been experiencing population declines. She developed microsatellites for this project (Haas et al. 2009) and completed a population genetic study (Haas et al. 2010). In addition, she worked on phylogeography of the endangered Snail Kite, as population sizes are declining again in Florida (Haas et al. 2009).
Greg Babbitt (PhD; co-advised with Dr. Ben Bolker). Greg is looking at fluctuating asymmetry. Some of this research involved clonal lines of aphids, raised under varying conditions to examine affects of “stress” on fluctuating asymmetry. Much of Greg’s research, however, focussed on the mathematical distribution and analysis of fluctuating asymmetry. He is currently doing a post-doc with Yuseob Kim at Arizona State.
Melissa Cousins (MS; co-advised with Dr. Colette St. Mary). Melissa examined reproductive behaviors in the Florida Flagfish. In particular, she looked at resource allocation towards reproduction by females in response to males of varying quality.
Jeremy Kirchman (PhD; Advisor David Steadman). Jeremy is examining phylogeography, phylogenetics, and evolution of flightlessness of rails in the genus Gallirallus, which is distributed in Oceania. He is incorporating paleontology, ancient DNA, and work with extant populations of rails. He is currently at the New York State Museum.
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS (hopefully complete)
Melany Danielson. Melany has worked on two projects in the lab. First, she looked at the evolution and phylogenetic utility of mitochondrial regions in galliform birds, along with Kelly Meicklejohn (Meicklejohn et al. 2014). More recently she was looking for correlates of parental care in galliforms.
Nick Persons. Nick is working on galliform phylogenetics, and he completed his honors thesis focusing on grouse. He is currently working to prepare this for submission to a pee-reviewed journal.
Gabe Jerkins (Summer 2013-Spring 2014). Gabe is working on piciform and coraciiform phylogenetics..
Sarah Ring (Summer 2012). Sarah identified genes that appeared to be under positive selection in comparing the chicken and turkey genomes.
Caitlin Wildes (Spring 2008-Summer 2013). Caitlin has helped on a variety of projects, but primarily focused on hybridization in >Terpsiphone; she was supported through the University Scholars Program. She then worked in the lab as a technician.
Reid Green (Spring 2008). Reid completed an honors thesis on the relationship between runx2 and bill length in the Scolopacidae. He left UF to attend medical school at UCF.
Carly Ferguson. Carly left UF to attend graduate school at UCLA. Her honors thesis at UF looked at the independent barriers to recombination at a locus (ATP5A1) on the sex chromosomes among ~20 different bird species. She was supported on an REU supplement and through the University Scholars Program at UF. She assisted with other projects as well, where she is a co-author (Kimball et al. 2013).
Jordan Smith. Jordan developed 40 additional loci to examine relationships among paleognathous birds (Smith et al. 2013, and Kimball et al. 2009). This was initially supported by an REU supplement, and then completed as a MS degree at UF. She also assisted on developing micrsoatellites for nuthataches (Haas et al. 2009).
Katie Zelle. Katie left UF to attend graduate school at Washington Univ. in St. Louis. She worked on various projects while in the lab.
Nick Lysak. Nick primarily worked in the lab to help on the brown-headed nuthatch project, though he also did some sequencing for phylogenetics.
Elon Fernandez. Elon helped out on the EarlyBird project and helped develop markers for long PCR to obtain 8-10kb segments of a single locus for phylogenetics; this was supported by an REU supplement. He left UF to attend medical school at NYU.
Amber Bonilla. She is now in graduate school at Dartmouth College. For her senior thesis, Amber examined the phylogenetic utility and molecular evolution of 3′ UTR regions (Bonilla et al. 2010).
Padi Tester. Padi worked on everything in the lab, and contributed a lot to several projects. Following her graduation, she stayed on as a technician before beginning an accelerated nursing program and is now employed as a nurse.
Natasha Elejalde. Natasha initially began collecting intron data for galliforms, but then she moved on to collecting some mitochondrial for Terpsiphone viridis and Terpsiphone rufiventer. She then went on to graduate school here at UF.
Victoria Heimer-Torres (now Heimer-McGinn). Victoria used the chicken genome project to locate non-canonical introns which she amplified and sequenced among some avian species (she is a co-author on Kimball et al. 2009 and 2013); she was funded on an REU supplement for this. She did a Fulbright in Norway and recently completed graduate school in Ireland.
James Franklin. James came in to the lab working with Jeremy Kirchman, but he subsequently worked with Jena Chojnowski and Edward Braun developing cDNA libraries of reptiles (he is a co-author on Chojnowski et al. 2007), and collected most of the data for one EarlyBird locus.
Syki Duong. Syki was been involved in a number of projects in the lab. She assisted on EarlyBird, worked on the plant genus Coreocarpus, and worked on alligator genomics. She was funded through the University Scholars Program at UF for this last project where she developed a fosmid library of the alligator. Syki left UF to attend medical school at Washington University in St. Louis.
Katherine Rozofsky. Assisted on the EarlyBird project. After leaving the lab, Katie joined the Peace Corps and went to Surinam.
Kevin Johnson. Assisted on the galliform intron project.
W. Andrew Cox. Andrew worked on a variety of projects , one of which led to a paper examining the phylogenetic position of the New World Quail (Cox et al. 2008). Andrew also provided a huge amount of assistance on the EarlyBird project (he is a co-author on Hackett et al. 2008). He has now completed his PhD from the University of Missouri (working with John Faaborg).
Dieula John. Dee provided general assistance on all of the projects in the lab at that time.
Dawn Yang. Dawn assisted with the EarlyBird project, particularly doing PCR and prepping samples for sequencing.
Andrea Garcia. Andrea developed her own project on the genetics of Gambusia exposed to toxins. She examined one gene (PGI) that has been suggested (using allozyme data) to be involved in resistance to pesticides and she looked for selection in a different population. She left UF to attend graduate school.
Doug Storch. Doug worked on a variety of projects while in the lab. He left the lab to attend dental school
Laura Salazar. Laura assisted with various aspects of the EarlyBird project.
Amanda Hudson. Amanda developed many of the primers that were used for the galliform intron project, and made it a much better project with many more loci than would have happened otherwise. She attended pharmacy school after leaving the lab.
Laura Patterson. Laura helped to obtain the complete mitochondrial sequence of Falco sparverius and Dryocopus pileatus.
Ana Galarza. Ana helped with the initial lab set up, and collected some of the preliminary galliform data in the lab.