Lab Members

Eric Bakota (2007-2011)
Eric started in the first year of the Frankino lab unpacking boxes and flipping flies. Eventually, his undergraduate research project grew into his Master’s Thesis on the genetics of variation underlying morphological scaling relationship parameters in flies. He is currently an epidemiologist for Harris County in TX.

Tiffany Harwell
Tiffany was in the lab during the early days and helped execute several large experiments in the lab. Following graduation she conducted research and taught in Columbia for a year or so, and now teaches in Austin. The lab has never quite recovered from Tiffany’s presence, or her absence.

Abby Lamb (2010-2012)
Abby worked on two projects in the lab. First, she managed the execution of a very large scale experiment that used experimental evolution to document the action and mechanisms of reinforcement in the maintenance of species boundaries in sibling Drosophila species. Second, she investigated the relationship between morphological variation and song performance in male flies. In this latter work she was supported by a UH SURF award. She is currently happily freezing in graduate school in MCDB at the University of Michigan, where she was awarded an NSF GRFP for her excellent dissertation work.

The Liras Brothers: George and Yanni (2009-2012)
George worked in the lab on a number of projects, focused primarily on assisting with the execution of our large artificial selection experiment aimed at altering scaling relationship slope. He also kept his younger brother, Yanni, in line. Yanni completed an honors thesis on adaptation to flight in different thermal environments. For this work he won ‘Best Honors Thesis’ at UH in 2012. Yanni was supported in medical school by the Joint Admission Medical Program, which paid all his medical school bills and gave him a stipend; he became a physician recently. George has started his residency as well. We miss them, and the barbeque they used to bring to the lab.

Sruthi Mathews (2010-2011)
Sruthi was a biomedical engineering student in the lab assisting Christine Sikes in the development of our progressive-velocity wind tunnel. She was supported in my lab by a PURS award. A Tier-One Scholar, Sruthi is crazy smart and has gone on to conduct research in other labs on campus, interned with Fairway Medical Technologies, been sent to study small business in India with the Bauer School of Business at UH, and went to Moscow as part of the Baker Institute for Public Policy/Rice University Summer Intern Program. After graduation, she got a great job in industry and now lives large.

Kendall Mills (2013-2014)
Kendall was a National Merit Scholar who conducted her Honors Thesis in the lab on the role of phenotypic plasticity in adaptive evolution.- work for which she won Outstanding Undergraduate Thesis of the year at UH. After earning her MS at UCSB in Environmental Science, she went on to join the graduate program at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Emma Perez
Emma was a SURF student in the lab that studied temperature-specific courtship song performance of genetically differentiated fly lineages. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Psychology studying the effects of developmental exercise on hippocampal precursor stem cells and their effects on stress resilient behaviors in adulthood.

Nalia Naaz (2009-2011)
Nalia worked on the relationship between morphological and fitness variation in flies, as determined by survival in the presence of predators at different temperatures. She was supported in this work by a UH STAR Fellowship. She parlayed her work on the evolution of complex phenotypes into a ticket to dental school, and is now a practicing dentist.

Christine Sikes (2009-2012)
Christine was a biomedical engineering student in the lab who worked on many projects. Her primary efforts, however, were focused on designing, manufacturing and assembling a progressive-velocity wind tunnel to measure the upwind flight ability of small insects. She was accepted to graduate school but saw that light and took a job in the biomedical engineering industry.

Sarah Smith (2010-2012)
Sarah ran the lab and kept Frankino in line. She also managed our large artificial selection experiment aimed at altering scaling relationship slope. She’s earned her PhD in the Linden/Henckaerts labs at Kings College London, where she investigated interactions between the small adeno-associated virus rep proteins and components of cellular transcriptional machinery. She was supported in her graduate work by a prestigious KINGS-PGR scholarship. They liked her so much, they kept her on as faculty after she earned her degree.

Mark White (2008-2010)
Mark was in the first generation of undergraduates in the lab. He primarily focused on aiding in the execution of a large project addressing the fate of enhanced species discrimination under relaxed selection against hybridization. After leaving my group, he earned his PhD studying the intersection of glutamine metabolism and androgen signaling in prostate cancer in Dan Frigo’s lab in the Center for Nuclear Receptors and Cell Signaling at UH, where his work was well-supported by the Louis-Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Bridge to the Doctorate Program Fellowship program.

Will Harcombe - University of North Carolina
Will was an undergraduate in David Pfennig’s lab at UNC when I was a postdoc there. I advised Will in the development of his thesis project on geographic variation in snake mimicry, helped him write grants and eventually with job negotiations when he became a professor at the University of Minnesota. Over the years, I have also tried to help Will develop his culinary skills.

Mike Benard - SWRS
As an undergraduate, Mike worked a great deal with me at the Southwestern Research Station during my dissertation research, aiding in a variety of studies on the evolutionary ecology of polyphenic amphibian larvae. I advised Mike during his selection of graduate programs; he excelled as a student and is now a professor at Case Western Reserve University.

Madeleine Korthof - Universiteit Leiden
Madeleine conducted an honors thesis with me when I was a postdoc in Paul Brakefield’s lab at Universiteit Leiden. Her project focused on the effects of novel morphological scaling on flight performance in the butterfly Bicyclus anynana. She is currently a teacher at a children’s school that blends education in the arts with discovery-based learning in science.

Mike Medvecz - SWRS
Mike was an undergraduate research assistant of mine at SWRS. Mike was funded by the summer REU program at the Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior at Indiana University. He is now leading the good life leading backcountry tours in the American northwest.

Mellisa Larson - Indiana University
Melissa was an undergraduate research assistant of mine at SWRS. She was funded by the summer REU program at the Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior at Indiana University. She conducted an independent project that examined the effect of pond drying on morph expression in polyphonic amphibians. Melissa is now a physician in Seattle.

Stellanie Krimm - Indiana University
Stellanie was an undergraduate research assistant of mine funded by a collaborative graduate-undergraduate research fellowship awarded to me as a graduate student. She traveled to me to do fieldwork at SWRS and conducted a project aimed at relating morphological variation to locomotor performance in metamorphic toads. Stellanie is living large in the Bay Area as a scientist at Pfizer.