Dr. Castellanos is the data manager and spatial analyst in the Han lab, where he supports data visualization and scripting. He received his PhD in Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences from Texas A&M University working with Dr. Jessica Light. This work focused on how natural history collections can be used to examine patterns of biodiversity and biogeography in Central American mammals, highlighting the continued importance of specimen collection and data digitization. Although he identifies as a mammalogist, Adrian has also worked on birds, amphibians, orthopterans, and ticks with projects involving disease ecology, behavioral plasticity, morphological shape change, cryptic diversity, and species distribution and occupancy modeling. His research interests include improving species distribution modeling for conservation and biodiversity work, biodiversity informatics, and helping write and troubleshoot code.

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Dr. July Pilowsky is a postdoctoral scientist in the Han lab, applying a process-explicit modeling approach to analyzing the ecology of infectious diseases and their hosts. They have a background in animal behavior, conservation biology, and ecological modeling. They received their PhD through a joint program between the University of Adelaide in Australia and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, researching and developing process-explicit ecological models. They applied this technique to reconstruct the range collapses of the extinct steppe bison and the currently threatened European bison over tens of thousands of years. They have developed / co-developed two R packages for ecological modeling: colorednoise, which models temporal autocorrelation, and paleopop, which models species range dynamics over long timescales.

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Dr. Ilya Fischhoff was a postdoctoral scientist in the Han Lab. His research applied machine learning and deep learning to understand and predict where and when zoonotic pathogens are likely to occur. Prior to joining the Han Lab, Dr. Fischhoff identified interventions that reduce Lyme disease risk as a postdoc with Dr. Richard Ostfeld at Cary Institute. Dr. Fischhoff came to Cary from the U.S. Global Change Research Program, where he helped produce the Third National Climate Assessment. This followed stints developing climate policy at the U.S. Agency for International Development, and natural resources and nuclear policy for then-Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts (as a Science & Technology Policy Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science). For his PhD at Princeton University, Dr. Fischhoff studied how zebras stay away from lions and make decisions in groups. During his PhD, Dr. Fischhoff co-founded Greening Princeton and helped create Princeton’s Office of Sustainability.

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Michael Moubarak was a 2020 REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) student in the Han Lab. His research identified places in the United States that are vulnerable to salamander population declines from an emerging fungal disease called Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans using machine learning techniques. He is currently pursuing a dual degree in biology and applied mathematics at Hamilton College and Columbia University because he finds patterns in nature aesthetically pleasing. With his degrees and passion for the outdoors, he wants to pursue a career using engineering and mathematical modeling techniques to find solutions to environmental issues that benefit multiple stakeholders. When he is not doing math or biology, he likes to spend time biking on roads, running in the woods, or reading on his couch. Michael is currently a PhD student at UC Berkeley in the Center for Computational Biology.

Tao Huang was the data manager and a programmer in the Han lab, where he managed multiple data streams, facilitates data science and collaborations, and builds and managed code and data libraries to support diverse research in infectious disease ecology. In  previous research, Tao applied watershed models and statistical analyses to understand land use, water quality, and ecosystem service dynamics. He earned his M.S. in environmental science from the University of New Hampshire in 2016. For his Master’s research, he used a river network model to simulate the fate and transport of fecal indicator bacteria. Prior to conducting research in the U.S., he applied watershed models to predict water quality and ecosystem service changes in Taiwan. His research interests include macroecological modeling of infectious disease, and applying computational approaches to the protection of human health and biodiversity conservation. Tao is currently a PhD student at Boise State University.

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Laura Yang is a Ph.D. student at Harvard University, studying atmospheric chemistry modeling in Daniel Jacob's lab. Her research projects involve using a model, satellite data, and aircraft observations to better understand tropospheric oxidant and organic chemistry over East Asia. Laura completed a two-year internship in the Han Lab conducting research on Ixodes ticks, using machine learning methods to identify which traits make certain tick species more likely to vector zoonotic diseases. This work was published in BMC Ecology (check it out, here). This work was also presented at the 2016 International Conference of Machine Learning. Laura graduated as valedictorian of her class from Spackenkill High School in Poughkeepsie, NY, and completed her undergraduate at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, GA.

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Nicholas Jakubek was an amphibian field technician for the Han Lab. As a Wildlife and Conservation Biology major at the University of Rhode Island, Nick worked in Dr. Karraker's lab assisting in research monitoring eastern box turtle populations and investigating long term effects of Bamboo Pit Viper relocation in Southeast Asia. After graduation, Nick began work as a project assistant in Dr. Ostfeld's lab on a long term monitoring project looking at the ecology of Lyme disease in small mammal populations. Nick's research interests in herpetofaunal ecology, conservation, and disease ecology have lead him to work with Dr. Han on a project looking at local amphibian habitats and potential indicators of amphibian pathogens.

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Catherine Kagemann was a 2015 REU (Research Experience for Undergraduates) student in the Han Lab and the LaDeau Lab. Her research at the Cary Institute focused on determining how the presence and predation on mosquito larvae by amphibians affect mosquito populations.  Catherine is from Bloomington, Indiana and attends Indiana University where she is a biology major interested primarily in genetics and ecology.  At Indiana University, Catherine works in the Lynch Lab researching the infection of Paramecium caudatum by bacterial endosymbionts such as Holospora undulata.  

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Michelle Victoria was a 2015 REU student in the Han Lab.  Michelle is interested in disease ecology, specifically the interactions between chytrid fungus and amphibians with an emphasis on management techniques.  Michelle researched whether or not filter feeding invertebrates feed on chytrid zoospores and significantly alter the chance of amphibian infection.

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