Current R-I Lab members

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


Brenda Cameron
(she/her/hers)

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.

Elli Cryan
(she/her/hers)

Elli is a Plant Biology graduate student coadvised by Dan Kliebenstein, working on the evolution of gene networks and the evolution of cross-incompatibility loci.

Natasha Dhamrait
(she/her/hers)

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/theirs)

Regina is a student in the Population Biology graduate group with interests including archaeology, genomics, and plant domestication.

Forrest Li
(he/him/his)

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.

Sowmya Mambakkam
(she/her/hers)

Sowmya is a Genetics and Genomics major investigating the population genetics of inversions in Zea.

Mitra Menon
(she/her/hers)

Mitra is a postdoctoral fellow working on the evolutionary genetics of TEs. Her previous work focused on ecological and evolutionary genomics of conifers.

Sarah Odell
(she/her/hers)

Sarah is a Plant Biology graduate student coadvised by Dan Runcie, working on evolutionary and statistical genetics in maize.

Alyssa Phillips
(she/her/hers)

Alyssa is a Plant Biology graduate student working on environmental adaptation in big blue stem as part of the PanAnd project.

Garnet Phinney
(she/her/hers)

Garnet is a Genetics and Genomics major working to understand the evolution and genomic variability of cross-incompatibility loci in maize and teosinte.

Julianna Porter
(she/her/hers)

Julianna is an Genetics & Genomics major and the recipient of the Nieland Family Award to do independennt research on adapation in Tripsacum as part of the PanAnd project.

Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra (he/him/his)

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.


Ayelet Salman-Minkov
(she/her/hers)

Ayelet is a project scientist, working in collaboration with Dan Runcie on a collaboration with CIMMYT to understand how genotype-environment association approaches can be best used to inform crop breeding.


Edwin Solares
(he/him/his)

Edwin is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow interested in applying computational solution to problems in genetics and genomics.

Lab Alumni

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

Current Collaborators

Genetic diversity in maize and teosinte * Jianbing Yan * Ning Yang

Evolution of Incompatibility Loci in Maize and Teosinte

Quantitative Genetics of Genotype x Environment Interaction

Evolutionary Genetics of Transposable Elements

Convergent Evolution in the Andropogoneae

Evolutionary genetics of highland adaptation in maize