People
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Graduate Students:
I am a first year Ph.D student and broadly interested in ecological genetics and genomics. Before coming to Notre Dame, I went to Ewha Women’s University in Korea for two years and earned B.S at Utah State University. My major was Biology emphasis on ecology and currently I am interested in speciation, natural selection and population genetics. During my graduate program at Notre Dame, I would like to focus on phenotypic plasticity and adaptive traits of Daphnia in different environment conditions. As new technologies have facilitated broader range of knowledge related to genomic divergence of species, I am excited to learn and apply the technologies to my research. Currently I am designing an experiment to determine systems genetics of phenotypic variation in Daphnia. I hope my research can provide a detailed map of genetic variation associated with phenotype in specific environment. My interests aside from biology are hiking, cooking, reading fashion magazines and internet shopping.
I am an evolutionary biologist broadly interested in feedbacks between organisms and their ecosystems, as well as underlying factors that influence genetic diversity within and between populations. My interests deal largely with feedbacks created when organisms encounter resource constraints within their environment—that is, how do organisms respond to deficiencies in limiting resources such as phosphorous and nitrogen, and how do those strategies affect other organisms and the overall resource landscape? I am particularly interested in the heritability of resource deprivation responses, and the potential for genetic drivers of environmental resource availability.
Most of my research works with the aquatic microcrustacean Daphnia, an eco-responsive, sentinel organism that has been studied for over a century. Daphnia is well-known for bothrapid evolutionary change and plastic responses to environmental perturbation. These ranges of response make Daphnia ideal for my research and the goalsof the Pfrender Lab.
I am a PhD student interested in how global warming effects the acclamation and adaptation to thermal stress, especially in arctic organisms. I use Daphnia to look at gene expression and survivorship to these stressors. My interests also include a more theoretical twist where I work on models that simulate latitudinal gradients to answer questions more broadly about adaptation to changing environments. Aside from science, I am also really into hiking and rock climbing. I am extremely excited to go out to the field this summer and collect lots of Daphnia!
My research interest broadly includes the area of ecotoxicology and evolutionary genomics. I am interested in heavy metal toxicity in aquatic organisms such asDaphnia. My primary goal is to look at the gene expression profile in Daphnia while exposed to different metals such as copper, cadmium, lead etc. and find out the regulatory regions of the genome that are responsible for up or down regulation of particular genes or a set of genes using genomic tools. Daphnia is widely accepted as a model organism by aquatic toxicologists because of its sensitivity to a broad range of toxicants and wide distribution throughout the world. Having the whole genome sequenced for Daphnia makes it a model organism to address toxicological questions at the genomic level.
I started in the Pfrender Lab in 2010, after finishing my Master's of Biology at the University of Texas at Tyler where I studied the ecology, morphology, and phylogenetics of a southwestern subgroup of map turtles (Graptemys). Before Texas, I received two Bachelor's of Science degrees from Michigan State University, one in Zoology and one from the Lyman Briggs College in Environmental Science and Management. While at MSU, I had the chance to study abroad in Kenya to study the behavior of African mammals and in Panama to study reptile ecology. I am currently interested in ecological genomics and phylogenomics and hope to continue working on turtles for a while longer in conjunction with the Turtle Genome Project. I am also very interested in bioinformatics and new genomic technology, spending much of my time learning as much as I can about this field of research. In my (limited) free time, I enjoy hiking, exploring the little towns in the area, training for a mini-marathon, and occasionally enjoying B-rated creature features.
