Lab members

Primary Investigator:

Dr. Sara Lipshutz is an Assistant Professor at Duke University. She was previously an Assistant Professor at Loyola University Chicago and an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at Indiana University. Sara pursued her PhD in EEB at UT Knoxville and Tulane University and majored in Biology at Swarthmore College. For fun, she loves to dance, bake, and care for plants. Sara’s CV

Postdocs:

Dr. Leilton Luna is an incoming postdoctoral research associate who will be studying Neotropical jacana genomics. He is a BioOne Science Communication Ambassador and currently a postdoctoral scholar at Penn State, studying ruffed grouse population genetics and conservation. Leilton received his Ph.D. in Zoology from the Federal University of Pará, where he studied the biogeography and genomics of Amazonian floodplain avifauna. You can learn more at his website: https://leiltonluna.com/

Dr. Gabriel Macedo is joining the lab to begin his postdoctoral studies on female ornamentation and the evolution of sex differences and similarities. Gabriel received his PhD in Evolution and Diversity from the Federal University of ABC and was Fulbright visiting researcher at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, studying the evolution of songs, plumage coloration and territorial behavior in Neotropical passerines.

Graduate Students:

Madison Chudzik is a PhD student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in Biology at Duke University (Fall 2023 – present). She studies avian migration in Chicago, using automated recorders and machine learning to monitor nocturnal flight calls. She is collaborating with Openlands and Dr. Benjamin Van Doren at UIUC. Madison received her BS in Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology from Colorado State University, and has worked as an Acoustic Ecologist in Grand Canyon National Park and as a policy intern with the Wildlife Society.

Tessa Patton is a master’s student in Bioinformatics at Loyola University Chicago, and will start her PhD at Duke University in Fall 2024. She studies sex variation and transcriptomics in socially polyandrous species, including spotted sandpipers and northern jacanas. Tessa received her BS in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and has worked with the National Park Service at Assateague Island and Sleeping Bear Dunes to monitor shorebirds. She has received a SICB Grant In Aid of Research and is certified in Wilderness First Aid.

Undergraduates:

Alexandra Juarez is a Mulcahy Scholar at Loyola. She was a field assistant on Team Spotted Sandpiper and received fellowships from the College of Arts & Sciences and Biology Department. She is conducting molecular laboratory research to identify genetic sex. She is sings in a Chicago-based rock band!

Kimberly Acosta is a Mulcahy Scholar at Loyola. She is studying species and sex differences in the jacana microbiome, in collaboration with Dr. Jenn Houtz at Allegheny College. She plays water polo!

Collaborators:

Jessica Schaefer is a PhD student with Tom Hahn at UC Davis. Her dissertation explores variation in mating and parenting behavior in the spotted sandpiper. She leads our field team in the Mono Basin. Jessica completed her master’s thesis on a limpet mating system at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, and majored in Biology at the University of Notre Dame.

Former team members:

Marcus Piattoni – Loyola University Chicago, soon to be Assistant Clinical Research Coordinator in Neurotechnology Ethics at UCSF.

Isabella Gates, Mulcahy Scholar and field assistant at Loyola University Chicago, now Research Technologist at Northwestern University

Quinn Thomas, former lab manager, now bioinformatician at a government research lab

Kanishka Singh, Loyola University Chicago

Alexis Rossi, Loyola University Chicago

Anisha Pethkar, Loyola University Chicago

Bella Zent, Loyola University Chicago – Med student at Creighton University

Austen Ehrie, Indiana University – PhD student at Texas A&M

Sam Torneo, Indiana University – staff in Anthropology at Indiana University

Amanda Wissman, Indiana University CeWIT REU – Med student at Indiana University

Tara Empson, Indiana University –  PhD student at the University of Tennessee

Abbi Turner, Indiana University –  PhD student at the University of Illinois

Dmitrii Galantsev, Indiana University – FPGA Design Engineer

Jace Kuske, Indiana University CISAB REU – PhD student at UC Davis

Evan Buck, University of Tennessee – Wildlife technician

Toni Brown, Tulane University – public affairs manager

Hannah Wilson, Tulane University – Researcher in Hawaii

Gina Zwicky, Tulane University –  Community Science Coordinator

Catherine Rochefort, Tulane University – Grad student at Southern Methodist University

Alisa Wallace, Puget Sound – software engineer