Dr. Holly Lutz 

Dr. Vincent Cassone 

Dr. Zinan Wang | Wang Lab

Bio:
Zinan Wang obtained his bachelor’s degree in agriculture from Beijing Forestry University in 2013. He came to the United States for graduate studies in entomology in 2015. Zinan first earned his master’s degree in entomology in Dr. Rodrigo Diaz’s lab at Louisiana State University in 2017. He then pursued his Ph.D. studies in a dual major program in entomology and ecology, evolutionary biology, and behavior \under the supervision of Dr. Henry Chung at Michigan State University, completing it in 2021. Zinan continued his research as a postdoctoral fellow in Chung’s lab at Michigan State University before joining University of Kentucky.

Abstract:
Organisms have evolved remarkable physiological strategies to survive in environments ranging from humid tropical forests to arid deserts. Yet how these strategies evolve, and what genetic changes underlie their diversification, remain fundamental questions in evolutionary biology. Water balance is a particularly important challenge for terrestrial organisms, and different species may achieve desiccation resistance through distinct physiological mechanisms. 

Dr. Jalene LaMontagne | LaMontagne Lab

Bio:
Dr. Jalene LaMontagne is the E. Desmond Lee Endowed Professor of Botanical Studies in the Department of Biology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and the Missouri Botanical Garden. LaMontagne is also a faculty affiliate with the Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. 

Before moving to her current position in 2024, she was a faculty member in the Department of Biological Sciences at DePaul University in Chicago between 2011-2024 and was a founding faculty member at the Asian University for Women, the first liberal arts university for women in South Asia, in Bangladesh in 2009-2010. 

She received her B.Sc. in ecology and MSc. in conservation ecology at the University of Calgary, and her Ph.D. in environmental biology and ecology at the University of Alberta. LaMontagne is a forest ecologist, macrosystems biologist and global change ecologist, with broad interests in the patterns and environmental drivers of synchrony and variability over space and time with a focus on tree reproduction (“mast seeding”). She has been studying mast seeding for 25 years and has been a contributing member and leader of international collaborative research groups working on continental to global scale research.

Abstract:
A key challenge is understanding how organisms respond to their environment and how they will respond to current and future global change. Patterns of tree reproduction have implications for forest regeneration, and high seed production years create resource pulses that have cascading effects across trophic levels. Mast seeding is a common reproductive pattern in populations of perennial plants that is characterized by spatially synchronous reproduction, which is highly variable over time. 

A variety of hypotheses suggest why mast seeding occurs, including evolutionary responses to satiate seed predators or to increase pollination efficiency. Studies of spatial synchrony in mast seeding have historically been based on population means within local areas. Research in my lab focuses on the patterns and drivers of mast seeding across multiple scales from individual trees to continental scales, and we test hypotheses about the roles of weather conditions (e.g., temperature, precipitation) and the consequences of mast seeding. I will show that mast seeding synchrony breaks down at both local (within-population) and regional to continental scales. 

At a continental scale, mast seeding reveals an "ecological dipole," characterized by significant anti-synchrony in high reproduction 'mast seeding' events in eastern and western North America, that is also seen in the dynamics of mast seed-eating small mammals. I will also present research on community-level mast seeding synchrony related to plant traits and test predictions for the effects of climate change on tree reproduction.

Dr. Kenneth Wright | Wright Lab

Abstract:
Circadian rhythms and sleep are highly integrated systems important for healthy physiology. In modern society, exposure to less sunlight during the day and electrical light at night disturbs sleep and circadian rhythms. Disturbed sleep and circadian rhythms contribute to disease and mechanisms of disease risk include alterations in energy metabolism and in the human proteome and metabolome. This talk will briefly review the above concepts and present new findings in this area of integrative translational research.

Bio:
Kenneth P. Wright Jr., Ph.D. is professor of distinction and associate chair for graduate affairs in the Department of Integrative Physiology and director of the Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is also professor of medicine adjunct in the Division of Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. 

Wright has more than 30 years of experience in sleep and circadian research and has led individual and multicenter/transdisciplinary team projects. His research aims to understand the physiology of sleep and circadian rhythms in humans and the health and safety consequences of sleep and circadian disruption, such as cardiometabolic dysregulation and impaired cognition. 

His research also explores the development of circadian and sleep biomarkers and strategies to promote sleep and circadian health to enhance alertness and maintain health and safety when sleep and circadian rhythms are challenged as well as circadian medicine and sleep-based treatment strategies. He has published more than 185 peer-reviewed original articles, given more than 85 invited international talks (five keynotes/plenary lectures) and more than 180 invited national talks (seven keynotes/plenary lectures). The National Institutes of Health support his current research efforts. 

Wright manages a large undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate training program in sleep and circadian physiology at CU-Boulder. Wright is committed to training the next generation of leaders in the sleep and circadian field. He directs two training grants a NIH T32 ‘Transdisciplinary Training in Sleep and Circadian Rhythms and a NIH R25 Multi-Institutional Summer Undergraduate Research Program to Promote Sleep and Circadian Research Careers. He also serves on the executive committee for NIH T32 Integrative Physiology of Aging Training Grant at University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. He is also on the external advisory board for three sleep and circadian T32s (at Harvard Medical School, Northwestern University and at the University of Miami).  

Wright serves in leadership, consulting and advisory roles for government, professional, community and commercial stakeholders. Wright serves on NIH-National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Board of External Experts, on the Governmental Affairs Committee of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms and as chair of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine Clinical Practice Guideline for the Treatment of Adults with Shift Work Disorder Workgroup. He has served on the NIH Sleep Disorders Research Advisory Board  of the NHLBI, the search committee for the director of the NIH/NHLBI National Center for Sleep Disorders Research, on NHLBI T32 Study Section and on the board of directors of the Sleep Research Society. 

He also has chaired the SLEEP meeting program committee, the SRS circadian rhythms section and the SRBR trainee professional development day and has served on the SRS presidential task forces on research funding, SRS strategic planning and scientific offerings workgroups. 

He has served on the AASM task force involving evaluation and treatment of circadian rhythm sleep disorders and the AASM Circadian Rhythm Disorders workgroup for the International Classification of Sleep Disorders Revision 3 (ICSD-3) and was editor of the SRS bulletin and APSS Trainee Manual in Sleep Research. He was co-chair for the World Sleep Federation Trainee Development Day. He also serves as a reviewer for numerous national and international granting agencies and scientific journals.

Abstract:
Circadian rhythms and sleep are highly integrated systems important for healthy physiology. In modern society, exposure to less sunlight light during the day and electrical light at night disturbs sleep and circadian rhythms.  Disturbed sleep and circadian rhythms contribute disease and mechanisms of disease risk include alterations in energy metabolism and in the human proteome and metabolome. This talk will briefly review the above concepts and present new findings in this area of integrative translational research.

Dr. Jake Ferguson | Ferguson Lab

Abstract:
Population cycles are a common phenomenon though there has been relatively little work assessing how environmental variability can impact these populations. In this talk, I explore how stochastic variation can drive lower total system variance as environmental fluctuations become more variable. 

This effect arises due to the influence of an unstable or stable equilibrium, often driving short-term transient dynamics that lead to qualitative changes in the long-run dynamics. I explore these effects in four ecological examples to illustrate the range of impacts of these effects on ecological systems. These results illustrate the complex interactions between stochasticity and nonlinear dynamics with significant implications for predicting how complex populations will respond to changing environments.

Dr. Robbie Burger | Burger Lab

Abstract:
Life is extraordinarily diverse — from fast-living microbes to long-lived giants, from communities in local green spaces to the global biosphere, and across timescales spanning Earth’s deep history to rapid environmental change today. Why do some animals live fast while others live slow? How do the dynamics of epidemics scale with population size? And why does biodiversity follow similar — or surprisingly different — patterns across mountains, cities, and islands?

In this talk, I’ll explore how data and theory reveal general scaling principles linking biological pattern and process from metabolism and life history to epidemics and biodiversity. Drawing on research with students and collaborators, I’ll show how scaling across levels of biological organization can reveal unexpected patterns, challenge established ideas, and open new questions. I’ll conclude with the Equal Fitness Paradigm, a framework that connects metabolism, life history, and demography through a common energetic currency and points toward new ways of understanding of how life persists and changes across scales.