Faculty
OEB brings together more than 75 faculty, providing critical mass needed for effective graduate training. Our faculty are drawn from 10 departments at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and from across the Five College System (Amherst, Hampshire, Mt. Holyoke, and Smith Colleges), as well as from off-campus institutions. OEB faculty are engaged in cutting edge research, with research clusters in four broad areas:
Animal Behavior
Behavioral ecology, communication, learning
Ecology
Community ecology, population ecology, landscape ecology, conservation biology
Evolutionary Biology
Evolution, phylogenetics, population genetics, molecular evolution
Organismal Biology
Physiology, morphology, paleontology
All OEB faculty are listed below. To help applicants to our graduate program locate a faculty sponsor, the faculty list can be filtered by four broad research areas. A list of faculty who are activiely seeking graduate students can be found HERE
| Name | Research Interests |
|---|---|
|
Anne Averill Professor, Environmental Conservation |
Insect pollinators and pollination services in managed ecosystems |
|
Annaliese Beery Assistant Professor, Departments of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Biology, Smith College |
Neuroendocrinology of social behavior |
|
Patricia Brennan Research Assistant Professor of Biology and Psychological & Brain Sciences |
Evolutionary consequences of interactions between behavior, morphology and the environment |
|
Bruce Byers Associate Professor of Biology |
Acoustic communication in birds |
|
Brian S. Cheng Assistant Professor, Environmental Conservation |
Marine global change ecology and the dynamics of predator-prey interactions |
|
Ethan D. Clotfelter Associate Professor of Biology, Amherst College |
Reproductive behavior of birds and fishes |
|
Alex Haro Adjunct Professor of Environmental Conservation Ecologist and Section Leader, Fish Passage Engineering S.O. Conte Anadromous Fish Research Center |
Fish behavior and migration; fish passage |
|
Peter W. Houlihan Senior Lecturer in Biology |
Animal Behavior, Vertebrate Ecology, and Conservation Biology |
|
Duncan J. Irschick Professor, Department of Biology |
Functional Morphology, Evolution, and Behavioral Ecology |
|
Elizabeth M. Jakob Professor, Biology Department |
Animal behavior, especially perception, learning, and social behavior |
|
Adrian Jordaan Assistant Professor, Environmental Conservation |
Ecosystems, modeling, tagging, movement, trophic dynamics, diadromous, marine, |
|
Jason M. Kamilar Assistant Professor of Anthropology |
Comparative biology of primates and other mammals |
|
Paul S. Katz Professor, Department of Biology |
Neuroethology, central pattern generators, single neuron RNA-seq, developmental neuroscience, evolution of neural circuits, molluscan systems
|
|
Melinda Novak Professor, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences |
Behavior of microtines and primates |
|
Sarah Partan Associate Professor, School of Cognitive Science, Hampshire College |
Visual and acoustic communication in mammals |
|
Jeffrey E. Podos Professor, Department of Biology OEB Graduate Program Leader |
Mechanisms and evolution of vertebrate behavior, bioacoustics |
|
Luke Remage–Healey Associate Professor, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences |
Neural basis of behavior |
|
Laela Sayigh Visiting Assistant Professor of Animal Behavior, Hampshire College |
Social behavior and communication of cetaceans (whales and dolphins) |
|
Alexander Suvorov Assistant Professor, Environmental Health Sciences |
Effects on behavior by environmental xenobiotics with endocrine disruptive properties |
|
Ethan J. Temeles Professor of Biology, Amherst College |
Foraging behavior; Territoriality; Intra- and Interspecific competition; Resource partitioning; Mutualism; Coevolution; |
|
Paige S. Warren Associate Professor of Environmental Conservation |
Urban ecology, human-environment interactions, animal behavior |