People
Principal Investigator: Deren Eaton
Deren Eaton
(de2356@columbia.edu) is an Assistant
Professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology
(E3B) at Columbia University.
He is an evolutionary biologist and botanist with broad interests
in plant biodiversity – from the scale of global patterns and community
assembly, to speciation and genetic variation within species.
Deren’s research is rooted in organismal biology and fieldwork,
with projects focused in the Tibetan plateau and cloud forests of
Central and South America. A common theme across his work
is the development of new computational or statistical methods
for analyzing comparative data, and the implementation and
support for reproducible science. Deren completed a
postdoc at Yale in 2017; earned his PhD from the University
of Chicago in 2014; and his BSc from the University of Minnesota in
2007.
Post-doctoral Researchers
Sandra Hoffberg (slh2181@columbia.edu) joined the lab
in 2017 as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow. Sandra’s work focuses the development
of genomic tools to expedite large-scale genotyping and bioinformatic
analyses. Currently, her work is focused on the agriculturally important plant
clade Amaranthus, where she is using genomics to study phylogenetic
history, introgression, herbicide resistance, and speciation.
Sandra completed her PhD in 2017 at the
University of Georgia where she studied Wisteria and
Kudzu and worked on the development of new genomic library protocols
3RAD and RADcap.
Carlos Alonso Maya Lastra (cam2384@columbia.edu) joined the lab
in 2019 as an Postdoctoral Researcher. Carlos is a computational biologist,
botanist, and systematist. His research interests include Euphorbiaceae
phylogeny and systematics of Cnidoscolus (More info:
http://camayal.info/). He is working in the Eaton
lab to investigate phylogeny and introgression in Viburnum using genomic
RAD-seq data, and on modeling speciation and gene flow of wild and
domesticated crop species using forward-in-time simulations. Carlos
completed his PhD in 2018 from the Institute of Ecology in Xalapa, Mexico.
Jianjun Jin
(jj3111@columbia.edu) joined the lab
in 2020 as an Postdoctoral Researcher. Jianjun is a computational biologist and
plant systematist interested in the development new software tools for
phylogenetics and genome assembly. His software tools GetOrganelle has become
widely used for plastome and mitogenome assemblies. He is working in the Eaton
lab to assemble a reference genome of Pedicularis, perform comparative
studies of floral gene expression, and to develop new bioinformatic tools. Jianjun
completed his PhD at the Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of
Sciences.
Graduate Students
Patrick McKenzie
(pfm2119@columbia.edu)
joined the lab in 2017 and was a recipient of an NSF Graduate Research
Fellowship (GRFP). Patrick’s PhD research involves the development of new
methods for inferring phylogenies and networks from SNP data. He is working on
phylogeographic and systematic studies of Chinese Pedicularis and
North American Monarda.
He completed his Bachelors degree at the University of Tennessee.
Jared Meek
(jared.meek@columbia.edu)
joined the lab in 2018 and is interested in plant biodiversity,
phylogenetics, and conservation. Jared’s research is focused on
developing comparative phylogeographic methods for comparing contemporary
and historical plant collections to detect recent human mediated gene flow
in the Hengduan Mountains. He completed his Bachelors degree at Brigham
Young University.
Jasmina
(jd3451@columbia.edu)
joined the lab in 2019 as an M.A. student interested in plant genomics. She is
currently investigating speciation genetics in Amaranthus by quantifying
pollen viability in F1 hybrids and determining the influence of sex determination
genes in reproductive compatibility between dioecious and hermaphroditic species
uses whole genome sequencing data.
Henry Landis
(henry.landis@columbia.edu)
joined the lab in 2019 as an M.A. student interested in plant genomics. He is
currently working on statistical models for studying the rate of evolution of
reproductive isolation in plant lineages using large-scale phylogenies of
clades with dense genomic data that can be used to infer historical
introgression. He completed his Bachelors degree at Amherst College.
Undergraduates
Scarlet Ming-Sha Au
(sma2244@columbia.edu) joined the Eaton lab in
2019 as a 1st year undergraduate student. Scarlet is interested in plant
phylogenomics and is currently working on greenhouse experiments in Amaranthus
and RAD-seq analyses to infer the history and timing of dispersal of
Viburnum species in Taiwan.
Former lab members
Guo Cen
(gc2799@columbia.edu)
spent one year in the Eaton lab as a visiting Ph.D. student from the Chinese
Academy of Sciences graduate program at the Kunming Institute of Botany
where she worked with Dr. De-Zhu Li. Her research uses phylogenomic data to
uncover the history of diversification of temperate woody bamboos.
Joining the lab
I’m looking to recruit talented
post-docs and student to work on independent projects and/or to join
on-going projects in the lab. If interested please contact Deren,
especially if you are interested in pursuing fellowship proposals for the
coming year. Many opportunities are available, including NSF graduate and
postdoctoral fellowships, and internal Columbia fellowships.