Christian Cox, Chair (chair.dee@sicb.org); Sarah Diamond, Chair Elect (chairelect.dee@sicb.org); Tonia Schwartz, Past Chair (past-chair.dee@sicb.org); Andrea Rummel, Program Officer (dpo.dee@sicb.org); Ariel Kahrl, Secretary (secretary.dee@sicb.org); Alexander Gunderson, Secretary Elect (secretaryelect.dee@sicb.org); Princeton Vaughn (princetonvaughn@princeton.edu) SPDAC representative.
Message from the Chair
Hello from your DEE Chair Christian Cox!
We have three new members of our DEE committee this spring, and two new positions to help us with our mentoring and social media! Sarah Diamond who was elected as Chair-Elect in last spring’s election and will serve as chair 2027-2029. Alex Gunderson was elected as Secretary elect and will serve as secretary 2027-2029. Princeton Vaughn was selected as our new SPDAC representative and will serve 2026-2029. We also want to welcome Camille Boucaud as our new social media representative and Elizabeth Hoffman as the chair of our mentoring committee! Ariel Kahrl (Hamilton College) is continuing as Secretary of the Division. Andrea Rummel (Rice University) is now our Program Officer.
First, a big thank you to past Program Officer Kristi Montooth, who built amazing programs for DEE the past two years! We really appreciate all of the hard work that they have put into making DEE a strong division.
Second, we are very grateful to all who participated in DEE activities at the annual SICB meeting in Portland, whether serving as judge for the Huey Best Student Presentation competition, or as a mentor or mentee for the SICB mentoring program, or by attending the SICB member meeting or joint social. Congratulations to the winner of the Huey Best Student Oral Presentation Yeraldi Loera, and the runner up Jon Merwin! Congratulations are also due to the winner of the Huey Best Student Poster Presentation Brayden Fracassa, and the runner up Erica Ro. Check out the profiles of the winners and runners up below. Our Meeting of the Minds mentorship program also had the most participants ever and was a great success. Our hope is that we can continue this great work at the next annual meeting.
Finally, I want to end by encouraging you to participate in divisional activities throughout the year as well as at our next annual meeting. We have excellent candidates for Program Officer-Elect, so please read their candidate statements in this newsletter and most of all, vote! Please also consider organizing a symposium, as DEE has a history of hosting diverse and exciting symposia. I also hope you keep an eye on upcoming communications from the division and the society, and participate in DEE events such as Meeting of the Minds and the Member Meeting at the next annual meeting. Thanks so much for being a part of DEE and SICB.
Message from the Division Program Officer: Annual Meeting and Symposium Updates
Our division was well engaged in the SICB Annual meeting in Portland, with nearly 400 presentations in the areas of ecology and evolution, six symposia co-sponsored by DEE and 25 talks in complementary sessions. We hosted a breakfast social that brought together scientists across four divisions, and a fun Meetings of the Mind connecting researchers across all career stages. We held our annual Members’ Meeting and the minutes can be found on our divisional website. We encourage you to attend the Members’ Meeting to become more involved in shaping the future of the society and its activities. Please attend this important meeting at SICB 2027 in Pittsburgh.
Speaking of SICB 2026, DEE will be co-sponsponsoring four symposia in Pittsburgh that span diverse topics including host-microbiome interactions, responses to climate change, polyploidy, and paleobiology.
Interested in organizing a symposium for 2028? Now is the perfect time to reach out to DPO Andrea Rummel to discuss your ideas for an August/September 2025 submission! Early career researchers – your ideas and visions are the future of SICB and Andrea would be delighted to assist you as you develop your symposium proposal. Detailed info on the process can be found here. Andrea can help you work through your ideas, speaker list, funding plan, and additional activities (companion sessions, lunches, etc.) for your symposium.
As always, please contact your DEE DPO, Chair, or SPDAC Representative with any suggestions or requests for next year’s SICB and associated DEE events in Pittsburgh, Oregon.
Message from the SPDAC Representative
Princeton Vaughn is the Student and Postdoctoral Affairs Committee representative for the Division of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at SICB. He is a PhD Candidate at Princeton University and is very excited to represent students and postdocs from across the division. He will be helping to coordinate our divisional mentoring efforts throughout the 2027 annual meeting, including small group mentoring and the Meeting of the Minds mentoring event. The SPDAC is focusing its attention on the 2027 annual meeting, incorporating the feedback received from this previous year to decide the specifics of the SPDAC-run events, like the workshop, booth, and orientation meetings.
Winners of the Raymond B. Huey Best Student Presentation Awards
We want to congratulate all the finalists who presented their research at the Raymond B. Huey Awards for the DEE Best Student Presentations!
Yeraldi is a fifth-year PhD candidate in Dr. Shane Campbell-Staton’s lab at Princeton University, where she studies evolutionary responses to anthropogenic stressors in wildlife. Her research integrates theories and approaches from evolutionary biology, ecotoxicology, functional transcriptomics, population genetics, and conservation science to capture both the signatures and mechanisms of selection across multiple levels of biological organization. She presented her primary thesis research, “Evolution to Pollution: Selection on ovarian physiology following chronic xenoestrogen pesticide exposure in wild alligators,” which combines field- and laboratory-based approaches and reflects her commitment to interdisciplinary collaboration and mentorship.
Brayden Fracassa is a senior at Roger Williams University working with Dr. Koty Sharp in the Coral Microbial Biotechnology Lab. He is developing Pseudoalteromonas rubra, a potential probiotic isolated from a crustose coralline algae (CCA), investigating its ability to protect larvae of the eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, against the pathogen Vibrio coralliilyticus. He used laboratory experiments to determine how P. rubra can be best deployed to protect oyster larvae in culture from V. coralliilyticus. While oysters exposed to V. coralliilyticus alone exhibited nearly 100% mortality, larvae pre-treated with P. rubra before Vibrio exhibited survival rates of 99%. Post-treatment by P. rubra produced a slight increase in survival but was not as effective as pre-treatment. P. rubra did not impact growth rate of Tisochrysis lutea, a common oyster algal feed. Ongoing work focuses on scaling up this work for oyster aquaculture operations in the Roger Williams University CEED’s Shellfish Hatchery in the upcoming season.
Jon Merwin is a PhD candidate working with Dr. Jason Weckstein at Drexel University. He is particularly interested in convergent evolution and collections-based research. For his project, he used whole genome sequencing of museum specimens and a new method he developed to collect color measurements from community science photographs to identify the genetic basis of mimicry in Ramphastos toucans.
Erica is a senior undergraduate at UCLA majoring in Environmental Science with a concentration in Conservation Biology. She is broadly interested in conservation genomics, population biology, and evolution under anthropogenic change. As a Summer Student Fellow at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Erica investigated genetic drivers of global thermal adaptation in the highly invasive European green crab, identifying a recently described supergene as a likely contributor. She aims to pursue a PhD and a research career using genetic and molecular tools to inform the conservation, restoration, and management of vulnerable wildlife.
Program-Officer Elect Nominees
Alisha Shah
Current position: Assistant Professor, W.K. Kellogg Biological Station, Dept. of Integrative Biology, Michigan State University.
Education: B.A. in Biology and B.A. in Journalism – University of Texas at Austin (2002-2007); Ph.D. in Zoology – Colorado State University (2012-2018); NSF Postdoctoral Fellow – University of Montana (2019-2021).
Professional experience: Assistant Professor Kellogg Biological Station-Michigan State University (2022-present).
SICB activities: Member since 2013; DEE Huey Award judge, judge for DEE student posters, Reviewer for ICB Journal
Other memberships: Society for Freshwater Sciences, Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science, Ecological Society of America Research interests: Ecological physiology, seasonality, thermal biology, community ecology, aquatic insects, conservation
Statement: I first attended the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology as a graduate student in 2013. Like many early-career researchers, I arrived feeling both excited and intimidated to present my work and engage with leaders in the field. What I found instead was a welcoming, inclusive, and intellectually vibrant community, one where my ideas were both thoughtfully challenged and genuinely celebrated. That experience shaped my continued involvement in SICB and my commitment to fostering that same environment for others. As a member (2013–present), I have contributed to DEE through service as a judge for the Huey Award and for student poster presentations, as well as a reviewer for articles submitted to Integrative and Comparative Biology. These roles have given me direct experience evaluating abstracts and presentations, and have reinforced the importance of supporting student development while recognizing excellence in emerging scientists. As Program Officer-Elect, I would bring strong organizational skills, attention to detail, and a commitment to clear and effective communication. I am eager to contribute to the planning and coordination of DEE programming, supporting a smooth programming process, and supporting community-building events such as the divisional social and Meeting of the Minds—opportunities that were formative in my own experience. I am committed to maintaining and strengthening the inclusive and supportive culture that defines SICB. Ensuring that all members feel welcomed, valued, and able to fully participate is essential to the continued success of our division. I would be honored to contribute to DEE in this capacity and support its mission within SICB.
Kristin Winchell
Current position: Assistant Professor of Biology, New York University – New York
Education: PhD University of Massachusetts Boston (2018), MA Columbia University (2011), BS University of San Francisco (2006)
Professional experience: Postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University (2021-2022) and Washington University in St. Louis (2018-2021)
SICB activities: I have been a member of SICB since 2022 and although a relative newcomer, I have been an active member and participant. I attended the 2023, 2024, and 2025 meetings along with members of my lab at all career stages (postdoc, PhD, MS, undergraduate). I have served as a student award judge, Safety Ally, session chair, and participated as a mentor in Meeting of the Minds. In 2024, I organized a society-wide symposium on urban evolutionary ecology along with members of my lab. I have also been a co-author and reviewer of multiple papers in ICB (even prior to my official membership), and co-organized the associated special issue for our 2024 symposium.
Other memberships: Society for the Study of Evolution, Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles
Research interests: My research group studies organismal responses to global change, with a focus on urban environments as a globally replicated “natural experiment”. Our work scales levels of biological hierarchy, integrating genomic, phenotypic, and ecological methods. Although I primarily work with reptiles (and Anolis lizards in particular), our research spans diverse taxa including insects, amphibians, birds, and mammals, united by the goal of understanding mechanisms of ecological and evolutionary change in the Anthropocene. Main themes in our research projects are phenotype-genotype mapping, population genomics, responses to urbanization (morphological, behavioral, physiological), and the repeatability of adaptive evolution.
Goals statement: On day one of my first SICB meeting I was hooked. I wish I had attended the meetings as a graduate student, but our January term field course always conflicted. When I started as an Assistant Professor in 2022, I thought it would be the perfect time to try out something new and had heard nothing but good things about SICB. I was immediately impressed by the inclusivity and diversity at the SICB meeting, and the incredible support offered to students. I was blown away by the number of undergraduate presenters and the high quality of their research, which has been a model for me as I started my own research group. I never attended a scientific meeting as an undergraduate and would have benefitted immensely from such an experience. Moreover, having attended more than one conference as a graduate student where I felt out of place, knew no one, or was overburdened with service tasks to earn travel support, the extensive support and programming for students at SICB meetings is reinvigorating and inspiring. It is now my favorite meeting to attend and I look forward to sharing the experience with my students. SICB is a unique society, and I truly value the science and the people that make it so. As a DEE program officer, my goal is to continue to foster this inclusivity and support, working with leadership to improve existing programs to better serve and recruit members with diverse identities and provide valuable and memorable conference experiences for students. I also am eager to explore new ways to support early career researchers and develop programming to promote networking (and friend making!) within and across all career stages.