Hector Castro's research interests center in the areas of environmental microbiology, soil microbial ecology and molecular microbial ecology; predominantly targeting the molecular, biochemical, and ecological aspects of the microbial geochemical element cycles in uplands soils and wetlands. He is involved in projects analyzing how soil microbial communities respond and adapt to anthropogenic impacts on a molecular level such as climatic changes, landuse practices, nutrient gradients, and pollutants. Hector is interested in studying and understanding the key microorganisms and functional genes underlying these biogeochemical processes using controlled laboratory conditions and field studies.
Paul Kardol worked with our group as a post-doc in 2007. He is now a staff scientist and Wigner Fellow at ORNL and collaborates with our group on a variety of projects.
Emily Austin will be joining the lab as a PhD student this fall. She will be co-advised with Chris Schadt. Emily is interested in fungi and has a great background in both field and molecular work.
Melissa Cregger began her PhD in the ecosystem ecology lab in 2007. She is interested in the effects of climate change on soil bacterial and fungal communities. Particularly, she is interested in how drought affects belowground communities and how these changes impact aboveground vegetation structure.
Chris Habeck is a PhD student in Rick Lindroth's lab group at the University of Wisconsin. He is a DOE GREF fellow collaborating with our group. Chris is broadly interested in the interactions between vertebrates, plants, and ecosystem processes. He is particularly interested in how small mammals respond to and mediate the effects of global change.
Nick Reynolds will be joining the lab as a PhD student this fall. Nick's research interests involve understanding linkages among soils, arthropods, plants, and ecosystems. Recently he worked on a project determining the non-target impacts of pesticides used against hemlock woolly adelgid on soil arthropod communities.
Ecosystem Lab Alumni
Orla Dermody's research explored how changes in the structure and functioning of plant canopies drive ecosystem response to global change, especially across multiple scales. As a post-doc at UT from 2006-2007, Orla examined how elevated [CO2], warming and altered precipitation modified diurnal fluxes of C and water in an oldfield. By linking her measurements with those of soil respiration and species composition, she predicted how C and water fluxes, were modified by interacting global change factors. Orla is now working in Europe for Pioneer Seed.
Katherine Sides was a post-BA with our group from 2005-2007. She graduated from Northern Arizona University and was interested in soil microbial communities. Katherine is now a MS student on the Ag campus at UT.
Emmi Felker-Quinn graduated from Smith College in 2006 and was a post-BA field technician with our group from 2006-2007. Emmi was interested in invasion biology and the effect of climatic change on plant communities. Emmi is now a PhD student in the Schweitzer/ Bailey lab in EEB at UT.
Cayenne Engel was the OCCAM field technician working at the University of TN. Cayenne has a masters from UT in plant community ecology, but is interested in both community and ecosystem questions. Cayenne now works as a research assistant in vegetation ecology for the National Park Service Monitoring Program based at UNLV.
Jennifer Burks was an undergraduate student at Earlham College who worked with us during the fall of 2007. Jennifer worked on a project examinating how climate change may alter forest hyphal and root decomposition.
Onike Mnzawa was an undergraduate student at UT who worked with our group as an intern for the summer of 2006.
Onike recently gave birth to a baby boy - Grasu!
Luke Zachmann graduated from the University of Minnesota, Morris and worked with our group as a DOE SURE fellow during the summer of 2006. Luke was interested in exploring the relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem resistance and resilience to natural and anthropogenic environmental perturbations such as climatic change.
Luke is now working on his MS degree in the Adler Lab at Utah State University.
Sharon Gray graduated from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in January 2007. Sharon worked with our group as a DOE SURE fellow during the summer of 2006. Sharon was interested in ecogenomics.
Sharon is now at PhD student at UI working on SoyFACE.
Kerri Crawford graduated from UT in 2006. While working in our lab she explored the links between plant genetics and herbivore populations on Solidago.
Rebecca Roha was an undergraduate student at Gettysburg College who worked with our group as an intern for the summer of 2006.
Marlene Tyner was an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan who worked with our group as an intern for the summer of 2006.
Marlene won a DOE scholarship to present her ORNL summer research poster at the 2007 AAAS meeting in San Francisco. She also has a paper in the JUR from her summer project (Tyner and Classen 2007).
Katrina Cox was an undergraduate student at the UT who worked with our group as an intern for the 2005-2006 school year.
Sam Freyaldenhoven was an undergraduate student at Hendrix Collegewho worked with our group as an intern for the summer of 2005.
Emily Mitchell was a SECME student during the summer of 2006. She completed and presented a study investigating how plant genotype alters gauling rates in goldenrod.
Xiongwen Chen worked with our group during the summer of 2007 on a soil respiration modeling project. Dr. Chen is a faculty memeber at Alabama A&M University and was a HBCU/MEI fellow.
