JSM 2014. Four of my former Ph.D. students, all in one place! (L to R) Helen Fan, Katie Thompson, Laura Kubatko, David Spade, and James Degnan.


Current People in the Research Group

Colleen Sunderland-Ober, M.S. student in Statistics
Colleen is studying models for gene flow under the coalescent.

Shawn Chen, Ph.D. student in Statistics
Shawn is studying composite likelihood approaches in phylogenetics.



Previous Group Members

Graduate Students

Md. Rejuan Haque, Ph.D. in Biostatistics, 2023
Thesis title: Testing Global Hypotheses Using Combination Tests, with Application to Phylogenetic Inference
Current position: Research Scientist, Center for Biostatistics, The Ohio State University

Lloyd Goldstein, M.S. in Statistics, 2023
Project: Estimating divergence times in species-level phylogenies
Current position: Ph.D. student in Statistics at the University of Cincinnati

Sungsik Kevin Kong, Ph.D. in EEOB, 2022
Thesis title: Towards the Network of Life: Phylogenetic Networks as a Tool to Understand Complex Evolutionary Histories
Current position: Postdoctoral scholar at University of California, San Diego

Jing Peng, Ph.D. in Biostatistics, 2021
Thesis title: Speciation Time and Hybridization Under Multispecies Coalescent: Estimation and Hypothesis Testing
Current position: Research Scientist, Center for Biostatistics, The Ohio State University

Yuan Gao, Ph.D. in Biostatistics, 2021
Thesis title: A Phylogenetic Approach to Study Cancer Progression
Current position: Scientist, Allen Institute

Andrew Richards, Ph.D. in Statistics, 2021
Thesis title: New Species Tree Inference Methods Under the Multispecies Coalescent Model
Current position: Visiting Assistant Professor, The Ohio State University

Matthew Wascher, Ph.D. in Statistics, 2020 (primary advisor Dr. David Sivakoff)
Thesis title: The contact process with avoidance and some results in phylogenetics
Current position: Assistant Professor, University of Dayton

Yuan Tian, Ph.D. in EEOB, Fall 2016; M.S. in Statistics, 2016
Dissertation Title: Topics in Phylogenetic Species Tree Inference under the Coalescent Model
Current Position: Senior Clinical Data Scientist/Research Scientist I, Bioinformatics, Gilead

Helen Fan, Ph.D. in Statistics, 2013
Dissertation Title: Species Tree Likelihood Computation Given SNP Data Using Ancestral Configurations
M.S. in EEOB, Summer 2010
Thesis title: Estimating Species Trees Using Approximate Bayesian Computation
Current Position: Quantitative Researcher, American Century Investments

Katie Thompson, Ph.D. in Statistics, 2013
Dissertation Title: Using Ancestral Information to Search for Quantitative Trait Loci in Genome-wide Association Studies
Current Position: Associate Professor, University of Kentucky

David Spade, Ph.D. in Statistics, 2013 (co-advised with Prof. Radu Herbei)
Dissertation Title: Investigating Convergence of Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods for Bayesian Phylogenetic Inference
Current Position: Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Lori Hoffman, Ph.D. in Statistics, 2010
Dissertation Title: Disease Gene Mapping Under The Coalescent Model
Current Position: STATKING Consulting, Inc.

Chen Meng, Ph.D. in Statistics (UNM), 2008
Dissertation Title: Phylogenetic Models for Hybridization in a Coalescent Framework

James Degnan, Ph.D. in Statistics (UNM), 2005
Dissertation Title: Gene Tree Distributions Under the Coalescent Process Curren Position: Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of New Mexico

Guy Brock, Ph.D. in Statistics (UNM), 2003
Dissertation Title: Models for Detecting Gene Regulatory Networks from Microarray
Current Position: Associate Professor, Biomedical Informatics, and Deputy Director, Center for Biostatistics

Carly Middleton, M.S. in Biostatistics, 2022
Thesis title: A Comparison of Two Maximum Likelihood Selection Identification Methods Applied to Protein-coding Regions of the SARS-CoV-2 Variant Genomes
Current position: Ph.D. student in Biostatistics at the University of Louisville

Joy Zeng, M.S. in Statistics (jointly advised by Prof. Matt Pratola)
Thesis title: Latent Factor Models in Recommender Systems and Market Segmentation Through Clustering
Current position: Statistician at Pfizer

Lingfei Cui, M.S. in Evolution & Ecology; M.S. in Mathematics
Thesis Title: A Likelihood Method to Estimate/Detect Gene Flow and A Distance Method to Estimate Species Trees in the Presence of Gene Flow
Current Position: Ph.D. student in Biostatistics at UC Davis

Lin Pan, M.S. in Statistics (UNM)

Kristina Strandberg, M.S. in Statistics (UNM)

Jennifer Bryant, M.S. in Statistics (UNM)


Postdoctoral Mentoring

Kristina Wicke, President's Post-doctoral Scholar
Current position: Assistant Professor, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Colby Long, Former MBI Post-doc
Current position: Assistant Professor, College of Wooster

Jeff Gaither, Former MBI Post-doc
Current position: Senior Bioinformatics Scientist at Nationwide Children's Hospital

Julia Chifman, Former MBI Post-doc
Current position: Assistant Professor, American University

Rasmus Hovmoller, Former MBI Post-doc
Current Position: Swedish Museum of Natural History


Undergraduate Students

Jerry Walsh, B.S. in Biology, 2021-2022

Purva Shenoy, MBI REU student, Summer 2021

Selin Kubali, MBI REU student, Summer 2021

Erika Fox, MBI REU student, Summer 2020

Amy Moore, MBI REU student, Summer 2020

Shelby Jansens, MBI REU student, Summer 2020

Kimberly Wiles, MBI REU student, Summer 2020

Xiaoyu Liang, B.S. in Data Analytics
Current position: graduate school

Haoran Wang, B.S. in Data Analytics
Current position: graduate school

Ben Stone, Undergraduate Research Fellow, RUMBA
Ben worked with fellow undergraduate student Niharika Padmalwar to study species relationships in the parasitic plant genus Hyobanche
Current position: Post-doctoral scholar at Indiana University (following Ph.D. in EEOB at OSU in 2021)

Niharika Padmalwar, Undergraduate Research Fellow, RUMBA
Niharika worked with fellow undergraduate student Ben Stone to study species relationships in the parasitic plant genus Hyobanche.

Rafah Asadi, Summer 2015 Undergraduate Research Fellow
Rafah worked on cancer phylogenomics.

Tiffany Bailey, Summer 2015 SROP Undergraduate Research Fellow
Tiffany worked on statistical phylogenetics, particularly the relationship between invariants-based methods and maximum likelihood for single-locus data.
Current position: Data Analyst, The Center for Family Safety and Healing

Divyagash Swargaloganathan, MBI REU student, Summer 2013
Divy studied coalescent-based priors for Bayesian gene tree inference.
Current position: Statistical Scientist, Sana Biotechnology, Inc. (after obtaining a Ph.D. in Biostatistics from Harvard)

Erin Harvey, Undergraduate research fellow, RUMBA

Shannon Kilkenny, Undergraduate research fellow, RUMBA

Yingle Zhang, MBI REU student
Yingle received an M.S. in Statistics at OSU following her undergradute studies.

Theresa Bolaney, Undergraduate research fellow, RUMBA

Paul Blischak, Undergraduate research fellow, RUMBA
Current position: Data Scientist at Bayer Crop Sciences (following Ph.D. in EEOB at OSU)

Susan Fassnacht, Undergraduate research fellow, RUMBA

Tim NeCamp, Undergraduate research fellow, RUMBA
Current position: Graduate student in Statistics at University of Michigan

David Gerard, Undergraduate research fellow, RUMBA
Current position: Assistant Professor, American University (following Ph.D. in Statistics at University of Washington)