Lab Alumni

Megan Bontrager

Megan Bontrager’s research focuses on the evolution of geographic ranges and the drivers of local adaptation.

Corlett W. Wood

Corlett joined the lab in August 2015 after finishing her PhD with Butch Brodie at the University of Virginia. Her research interests include community ecology, evolution, and host–parasite interactions.

Michelle E. Afkhami

Michelle joined the lab in September 2013 after receiving a prestigious EEB Departmental Post-Doctoral Fellowship. Her research focuses on the ecology and evolution of species interactions.

Young Wha Lee

Young Wha joined the lab in December 2010 to work on Capsella population genomics. She completed graduate work at Duke University and worked on genetics and adaptation.

Billie Gould

Billie joined the lab in January 2013 while finishing her PhD at Cornell University. She worked on the genetics of adaptation in Arabidopsis thaliana, ecological genetics of rapid evolution, and genomics of flowering-time differentiation. She currently works as a computational biologist.

Katy Heath

Katy began a faculty position at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Her research interests include the ecology, genetics, and coevolution of mutualisms.

Karen Samis

Karen completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the lab after finishing her dissertation at Queen’s University. Her research interests include the ecology, genetics, and evolution of range limits and ecological genetics in Arabidopsis thaliana. She now runs her own lab at the University of Prince Edward Island.

Tyler Kent

Tyler came to the lab via UC Davis and worked on population genetics and evolution.

Amanda Stock

Amanda was a long-time member of the lab, joining in 2008 as an undergraduate and completing her MSc in 2015. Her research included herbivory, competition, nodulation in Medicago, multivariate clines in morning glory, and selective agents acting on flowering time.

Adriana Salcedo

Adriana completed an MSc working on climate adaptation in Capsella. She also had previous research experience studying lichens and was co-advised by John Stinchcombe and Stephen Wright.

Tia Harrison

Tia completed an MSc studying comparative population genetics in Medicago lupulina and its associated bacteria. As an undergraduate, she worked with Ben Evans at McMaster University.

Amanda Gorton

Amanda completed her master’s degree in the lab and later worked as a technician. Her research included leaf-shape variation, cold tolerance, and coevolutionary genetics between Medicago and its associated rhizobia.

Brandon Campitelli

Brandon was John’s first completed PhD student. He studied how variation in leaf patterns, including shape, mottling, and developmental stage, affects herbivore damage, insect performance, and plant photosynthetic capacity.

Anna Simonsen

Anna studied plant–microbial mutualisms and how community context alters their costs and benefits. She worked on Medicago lupulina after beginning her work in the lab with morning glories.

Emily Josephs

Emily was jointly advised by the Stinchcombe and Wright labs and worked on Capsella. She later completed post-doctoral work at UC Davis and now has her own lab at Michigan State University.

Tia Harrison

Tia was a co-advised PhD student studying rhizobia diversity across latitude and rates of evolution in rhizobia and legume genomes.

Julia Kreiner

Julia was co-advised by Stephen Wright. Her undergraduate work focused on ploidy levels in the Brassicaceae family, and she is interested in the population genomics of weed adaptation to agriculture.

Joshua Craig

Joshua completed a Master’s degree studying the population genetics of Daucus carota and how different evolutionary forces shape the genome. He is currently working as a Clinical Research Project Assistant.

Bonnie Pikington

Bonnie joined the lab after taking John’s tropical ecology course. She completed an undergraduate research project on root-knot nematodes.

Priya Vaidya

Priya joined the Stinchcombe lab in 2016 and later stayed for an MSc after spending the summer following her undergraduate degree at RMBL.

Isabela Borges

Isabela joined the lab in 2015 and had interests in community ecology and coevolution.

Hannah Fung

Hannah worked in the Stinchcombe lab on a project examining Arabidopsis flowering-time evolution.

Julie Thompson

Julie joined the Stinchcombe lab in September 2013 after working in the Weis lab. Her research focused on phenotypic differences between native and invasive species of ragweed.

Phillip Rekret

Phil worked in the lab on a summer research project examining hypotheses about bacterial tolerance to nitrogen content.

Rufina Kim

Rufina worked in the lab as a work-study student and later pursued a summer research project examining hypotheses about morning glory germination survival.

Shery Han

Shery completed a third-year project examining the effects of microbial variation on plant performance and worked to isolate microbes.

Julie Gan

Julie joined the lab in 2020 after working in the Sage lab and completed a 499 research course during the pandemic. She worked on population genetics with Queen Anne’s Lace.

Jessie Wang

Jessie joined the lab in the summer of 2020 after working in the Weis lab. Her field-work plans were interrupted by the global pandemic.

Erin Dann

Erin’s fourth-year project examined whether Arabidopsis thaliana exhibits a latitudinal cline in photoperiod sensitivity using chamber experiments with European accessions.

Andrea Rico Wolf

Andrea worked in the lab on a 299 Research Opportunity Project examining whether tortoise beetles have preferences for different leaf shapes of morning glory.

Parastoo Azizi

Parastoo received a University of Toronto Excellence Award in Natural Sciences and Engineering. Her project tested the limiting-resource model of plant tolerance to tissue damage using Arabidopsis thaliana.

Emily Drummond

Emily worked in the lab compiling a database of papers that measured direct and indirect selection on phenotypic traits before leaving Toronto for Vancouver to complete an MSc.

Carlin Sweeney

Carlin received an NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award. Her research examined compensatory growth in Impatiens capensis and asymmetric competition in size-structured populations.

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