Current Members
Andrew Hein
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
Andrew Hein is a theoretical and computational biologist in the Department of Computational Biology at Cornell University. Prior to joining the faculty at Cornell, he was PI and Director of the Ecology of Information Lab at UC Santa Cruz/NOAA, and a James S. McDonnell Fellow in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at Princeton University. He received his PhD in Biology (co-advised in Mathematics) from the University of Florida. Contact: andrew.hein [at] cornell {dot} edu.
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Ling-Wei Kong
POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW
Ling-Wei merges insights from nonlinear dynamics, machine learning, physics, and complex systems to confront ecology's pressing challenges. His interests span levels of organization - from neural to demographic. Ling-Wei’s site.
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Alexis Earl
NSF POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW
Alexis is an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in Biology studying the processes that link individual phenotypes, collective behavior and ecological function. She earned her PhD from Columbia University in the department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, where she studied the evolution of cooperative group-living and how sociality helps organisms cope with unpredictable environmental variability.
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Abigail Grassick
PHD STUDENT
Abby completed undergraduate studies at Boston University where she studied tuna fisheries and the impacts of large-scale Marine Protected Areas on fishery ecology. She is broadly interested in ecological dynamics, early life histories, and conservation.
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Amlan Nayak
PHD STUDENT
Amlan is a physicist by training with a background in studying animal groups using computational approaches. He is mainly interested in how decision-making, information transfer and movement affect the behavioral aspects of animal groups.
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Lucas Gallart
PHD STUDENT
Lucas is a marine biologist from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile where he studied both marine biofilms and planktonic network interactions of microorganisms. He is interested in ecosystem and communities dynamics and the potential of machine learning tools to unravel these.
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Jenny Mao
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCHER
Jenny is an undergraduate at Cornell majoring in Computer Science. She works with us on computer vision and automated behavior inference from imagery.
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Chris Gunning
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCHER
Chris is an undergraduate at Cornell majoring in Computer Science. He works with us on computer vision, 3D reconstruction, and automated analysis of field imagery.
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Rahi Dasgupta
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCHER
Rahi is an undergraduate at Cornell majoring in Data Science. She works with us on computer vision and automated video segmentation.
Join the lab
We are always looking for dynamic new scientists, mathematicians, and engineers to join the lab. Interested graduate, postdoctoral, or undergraduate researchers should contact Andrew to inquire about possibilities.
Alumni
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Mike Gil
POSTDOCTORAL SCIENTIST
Mike earned his PhD in Biology from the University of Florida and, before joining us, held an NSF-funded postdoctoral fellowship in Andy Sih’s group at UC Davis. Mike works on cutting-edge science at the interface of ecology, animal behavior, and conservation(Mike’s website). Mike is an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
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Ashkaan Fahimipour
POSTDOCTORAL SCIENTIST, NRC FELLOW
Ashkaan is a an ecologist with a background in both theory and experiments. He is interested in species interactions, ecosystem dynamics, and generally all things ecological. He worked with us on dynamics of information spread in animal groups. Ashkaan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Florida Atlantic University.
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Vamsi Sridharan
POSTDOCTORAL + PROJECT SCIENTIST
Vamsi earned his PhD in engineering from Stanford. His work with our lab focused on the interface between physics of fluid flow and fish behavior, ecology, and migration (Vamsi’s website). Vamsi is currently an engineer at Tetra Tech.
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Ben Pritikin
UNDERGRAD RESEARCHER
Ben is an Earth and Planetary Sciences major at UC Santa Cruz. He worked with us on machine learning methods for data collection and inferring behavioral control rules.
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Gurleen Brar
UNDERGRAD RESEARCHER, TECHNICIAN
Gurleen graduated in Human Biology at UCSC in 2019. She worked with us on escape decision-making and navigation projects. She now applies her scientific skills in the biotech industry.
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Natnael Hamda
POSTDOCTORAL + PROJECT SCIENTIST
Natnael worked with us on Machine Learning and AI applications. He is now a data scientist in the private sector.
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Scott Nguyen
UNDERGRAD RESEARCHER
Scott is an undergraduate Neuroscience major at UCSC. He worked with us on escape decision-making and underwater computer vision.
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Mimi Celis
STAFF DATA SCIENTIST/ENGINEER
Mimi is a software engineer and applied mathematician with several decades of industry experience. She worked with us as a data scientist and software engineer applying machine learning and computational modeling to problems in animal behavior and ecology. She is now retired.
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Sam Nelson
RESEARCH TECHNICIAN
Sam graduated with a data science major from Berkeley. He worked with us on computer vision and machine learning for behavioral inference. He is now pursuing research career in ethical AI.
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Kaarthik Varma
ROTATING PHD STUDENT
Kaarthik was a rotating PhD student in Physics at Cornell. He worked with us on models of collective behavior and dysfunction in biological networks.
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Simone Olivetti
POSTDOCTORAL SCIENTIST
Simone is a computational fluid dynamicist. He worked with us on fusing fluid dynamics with models of animal decision-making to understand how animals move through their environments. He is now a staff scientist at NOAA/UC Santa Cruz.
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Ben Burford
POSTDOCTORAL SCIENTST
Ben completed his PhD at Stanford, where he studied the ecology and social behavior of cephalopods. He worked with us on individual and collective evasion behavior. He is currently a staff scientist at NOAA/UC Santa Cruz.