Current R-I Lab members

Please read more information on joining the lab and lab expectations.

Brenda Cameron (she/her)

Brenda is the lab manager and czar. In addition to working with us, she manages the Bay, Grosberg and Stachowicz labs as well, and is an award-winning lab safety expert.

Yu Cao (she/her)

Yu is a joint postdoc with our collaborator Ning Yang at HZAU. Yu is working on understanding the population and quantitative genetics of introgressed teosinte haplotypes in maize.


Mackenzie Chun (she/her)

Mackenzie is an EVE Scholar and a 2nd-year Stats/Anthro double major, working with Paulo Magalang on genome evolution and genetic variation in maize.


Natasha Dhamrait  (she/her)

Natasha is a student in the Population Biology graduate group with interests including plant evolution, domestication, genome biology, and transposable elements.

Regina Fairbanks (they/them)

Regina is a student in the Population Biology graduate group, currently working on the population genetics and archaeology of the maize domestication locus tga1.

Julia Harenčár  (she/her)

Julia is a CPB and USDA postdoc coadvised by Graham Coop, Jen Funk and Jenny Gremer, working on climate adaptation and hybridization in California wild radishes.


Forrest Li  (he/him)

Forrest is a graduate student in Integrative Genetics and Genomics working on climate adaptation in maize as part of a large international collaboration led by CIMMYT. He is coadvised by Dan Runcie.

Beibei Liu  (she/her)

Beibei is a postdoc working on the evolution of transposable elements in maize and teosinte During her PhD she worked on epigenetics in maize.


Paulo Magalang  (he/him)

Paulo is a graduate student in Integrative Genetics and Genomics working on using whole genome assemblies to study allelic diversity and demography in maize.

Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra  (he/him)

Jeff is a Professor in the Department of Evolution and Ecology and a faculty member of the Center for Population Biology and the Genome Center. He is also the Scientific Director of HPC@UCD


Samantha Snodgrass  (she/her)

Sam is an NSF Plant Genome postdoc working on the coevolution of humans and their domesticated plants. She is coadvised by Graham Coop.


Cristian Stark (he/him)

Cristian is a Genomics Data Scientist at Bayer Vegetables R&D and a PhD graduate student in Integrative Genetics and Genomics working on genomic selection, pangenomes, and inbreeding depression in Zea. He is coadvised by Dan Runcie.

Natalie Veech (she/her)

Natalie is a 3rd Year Environmental Science and Management Major and EVE Scholar working on machine learning approaches to study life history of radishes using herbarium specimens. She works closely with Julia Harenčár and is also a member of the Gremer Lab.

Lab Alumni

Fellow of the R-I Lab: for >500 hours of scholastic fellowship

Current Collaborators

Genetic diversity in maize and teosinte

Identifying environmentally adaptive alleles for breeding