Powell Lab at Binghamton University
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PI - Tom Powell
Assistant Professor 
Department of Biological Sciences
Office- 112 Science III
Phone- 607-777-4439
email- powellt@binghamton.edu

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I started as a faculty member at Binghamton in August 2016. I came here after a postdoc in Dan Hahn's evolutionary physiology lab in the Entomology and Nematology Department at the University of Florida. Before that, I spent time as visiting postdoc working with Art Weis at the University of Toronto's Koffler Scientific Reserve. I did my PhD at the University of Notre Dame under the guidance of Jeff Feder. My undergrad alma mater is Shepherd University in West Virginia, where I had the opportunity to start my research career in the conservation genetics lab at the USGS Leetown Science Center.  
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Postdoc - Alycia Lackey
Office  - G46 Science III
email- alackey@binghamton.edu
website: alyciarlackey.weebly.com
 

Alycia
 started as a postdoc in the lab in the summer of 2017. She is interested to understand how populations diverge and potentially evolve into new species as well as how environmental change affects these processes. Before coming to Binghamton, she completed a postdoc at Murray State University examining lifetime fitness consequences for two morphs of long-lived tiger salamanders. Before that, she earned her Ph.D. from Michigan State University and worked on speciation, sexual selection, and how environmental change facilitated hybridization between two species of threespine stickleback fish. You can read more about her work on her website.

Graduate Students

If you are interested in the joining the lab, please see "opportunities" above for more information. 
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Pheobe Deneen


Office - 115 Science III
email - pdeneen1@binghamton.edu
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I am a  PhD student in the Powell Lab. I graduated from UMass Amherst in May 2017; my undergraduate research in the Adler Lab was on how the chemical composition of pollen affects parasite load in bumblebees. I am broadly interested in how multitrophic systems respond to environmental changes, as well as speciation in plant-insect systems.




Gabriella Quartuccia 



Office - 115 Science III
email - gquartu1@binghamton.edu

I received my BS in Biological Sciences from the University at Buffalo in 2016 where I worked with Dr. Charlotte Lindqvist on examining the evolution of brown, black, and polar bears in the Arctic throughout time using SDM computer modeling. In my time off from school I worked as a Veterinary Assistant and as a Research Technician in a cardiometabolic genomics lab; both of which aided in my decision to return to graduate school and join the Powell lab. I am a first year PhD student in the Powell lab and I am broadly interested in evolutionary genetics and speciation biology. I particularly want to aid in identifying genetic variations between closely related species, elucidating the functional advantage these variants may confer, and overall trying to answer the question “what is a species?”.



Jordyn Condrate


Office - 182 Science III
email - jcondra1@binghamton.edu

I
am a first-year Ph.D. student in the Powell Lab. I graduated from the University of Rochester in May 2021. While there, I researched the genetics of ethanol and heat tolerance of common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster with Dr. James D. Fry. I also investigated parasitoid wasp (Nasonia) courtship and mating behavior, as well as their species distributions in wild bird nests over time with Dr. John (Jack) Werren. I am interested in how environmental changes due to climate change play a role in insect speciation, as well as the underlying genetics behind these changes. I am currently working with the apple maggot fly, Rhagoletis pomonella.


Janelle B. Talavera (co-advised with Lindsey Swierk)

Office - 354 Science III
email - jtalave1@binghamton.edu

I am a PhD student in the Swierk and Powell Labs. In May 2020 I received my BS in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from California State University Northridge, where I worked with Dr. David Gray and Dr. Jeanne Robertson. As an undergraduate I investigated the evolution of prezygotic isolation and speciation among three groups of closely related field crickets. I also investigated the coevolution of signalers and receivers in the field cricket, Gryllus lineaticeps, and parasitoid fly, Ormia ochracea. I also researched sex differences in the costs of boldness in water anoles, Anolis aquaticus, with Dr. Bree Putman and Dr Lindsey Swierk. My undergraduate research experiences shaped my love for behavioral ecology and speciation. I am currently investigating behavioral and ecological reproductive isolating mechanisms and the genomic context of speciation in a water anole species complex. 





Current undergraduate researchers:


    Adeenah Ahmed     C'19  Integrative Neuroscience

    Austin Dukat          C'19  Biology

    David Fama            C'19  Biology

    Stephanie Maung   C'18  Biology

    Nadia Mirza           C'19  Biology, Arabic, History

    Maria Molina         C'19  Environmental Studies

    Ilana Pytaseky       C'18  Biology

    Eden Romeo          C'19 Biology

    Maria Santa Cruz   C'18  Integrative Neuroscience

    Brooke Thornhill   C'19  Biology


Field work specialist:
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