Educational Experience:
Ph.D., Ecology & Evolution, Florida International University, B.Sc. (Hons), Zoology with Conservation, University of Wales
Research Interests:
Evolutionary ecology, community ecology, species interactions, microevolution, macroevolution, herpetology, global change biology, climate change, invasive species, functional morphology

Overview:
Welcome to the Stroud Lab!

Our goal is to understand the ecological and evolutionary processes responsible for driving patterns of biodiversity across space and time. To do that, we study the evolutionary ecology of lizards: a fascinating and hyper-diverse group of organisms.

Our approach is highly multidisciplinary, integrating ecology, evolution, behavior, physiology, biomechanics, and natural history. To do this, we combine field studies in the wild with macro-ecological and evolutionary analyses.

For more information on our key research themes please take a look at our website (above; soon to be updated) and please get in contact if any of our research interests you!

Anqi Wu is an Assistant Professor at the School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE), Georgia Institute of Technology. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. degree in Computational and Quantitative Neuroscience and a graduate certificate in Statistics and Machine Learning from Princeton University. Anqi was selected for the 2018 MIT Rising Star in EECS, 2022 DARPA Riser, and 2023 Alfred P. Sloan Fellow. Her research interest is to develop scientifically-motivated Bayesian statistical models to characterize structure in neural data and behavior data in the interdisciplinary field of machine learning and computational neuroscience. She has a general interest in building data-driven models to promote both animal and human studies in the system and cognitive neuroscience.

Prof. Singh has a joint appointment with the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.

Prof. Singh started at Cornell University as an Assistant Professor in 2013 and was promoted with tenure to Associate Professor with joint appointments in the Mechanical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering. At Cornell, he served as the Associate Director of the NIH T32 training grant on Immuno-engineering, executive council of the Center for Immunology, and the Cornell (Ithaca) – Weill Cornell Medicine (NYC) Academic Integration initiative. Prior to joining Cornell, he completed his postdoctoral training in cell mechanobiology, cell-matrix interactions, and stem cell engineering at Georgia Tech in Mechanical Engineering.

Dr. Pardue is a Research Career Scientist at the Atlanta VA Medical Center, and a Professor in Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University School of Medicine. Dr. Pardue received her B.S. in zoology from the University of Wyoming and her doctorate in vision science and biology at the University of Waterloo. Her post-doctorate training in visual electrophysiology was completed with Dr. Neal Peachey at Loyola School of Medicine and Hines VA Hospital in Chicago and focused on biocompatibility of retinal prosthetics. Dr. Pardue moved to Atlanta in 2000 to join the Atlanta VA Medical Center and Emory University Department of Ophthalmology. She moved her academic appointment to Biomedical Engineering in 2015. Her research interests are focused on developing treatments for people with vision loss. To this end, she has developed three research themes within her lab: 1) neuroprotective and restorative treatments for retinal degeneration, 2) early detection and treatment of diabetic retinopathy, and 3) retinal mechanisms of refractive development and myopia. Her research has been continuously supported by the Department of Veterans Affairs, NIH, and private companies (1999-present). She has served on several VA and NIH grant review panels and frequently reviews manuscripts for several journals including Journal of Neuroscience, Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Molecular Vision, Vision Research, Journal of Neuroscience Methods, Journal of Neurochemistry and PlosOne.

Gaucher was guided in biochemistry by Peter Tipton and Bayesian Theory by George Smith. Gaucher subsequently earned his Ph.D. from the University of Florida under the tutelage of Steve Benner and Michael Miyamoto.[1] Gaucher received the Walter M. Fitch Award from the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution for his graduate work.[2] He then did postdoctoral work with NASA's Astrobiology Institute in conjunction with a National Research Council Fellowship. After the two-year fellowship, Gaucher served as President of the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution.

Gaucher was hired as an Associate Professor by the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2008 [1][3][4] The Gaucher group conducts basic and applied research at the interface of molecular evolution and synthetic biology. As of February 2016, his h-index, as calculated by Google Scholar, is 25.[5]

Gaucher is also the founder and president of the early-stage biotechnology company General Genomics. His company exploits novel platforms to engineer proteins for the biomedical and industrial sectors.

Hee Cheol Cho is the Urowsky-Sahr Scholar in Pediatric Bioengineering and Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Pediatrics. He received his PhD in Physiology from the University of Toronto in 2003.

Dr. Gregory S. Sawicki is the Interim Executive Director of the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines and Professor and Joseph Anderer Faculty Fellow at Georgia Tech with appointments in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Biological Sciences. He holds a B.S. from Cornell University ('99) and a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from University of California-Davis ('01). Dr. Sawicki completed his Ph.D. in Human Neuromechanics at the University of Michigan, Ann-Arbor ('07) and was an NIH-funded Post-Doctoral Fellow in Integrative Biology at Brown University ('07-'09). Dr. Sawicki was a faculty member in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at NC State and UNC Chapel Hill from 2009-2017. In summer of 2017, he joined the faculty at Georgia Tech with appointments in Mechanical Engineering 3/4 and Biological Sciences 1/4.

After studying ecology as a biology major at Swarthmore College, Annalise Paaby learned fly pushing as a technician for Steve DiNardo and then discovered evolutionary genetics as a tech for Paul Schmidt. She joined Paul’s lab as a graduate student and earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009. In 2015, Paaby completed her postdoctoral training with Matt Rockman at New York University and began her appointment at Georgia Tech.

Patrick McGrath's research group is interested in understanding the genetic basis of heritable behavioral variation. In the current age, it has become cheap and easy to catalog the set of genetic differences between two individuals. But which genetic differences are responsible for generating differences in innate behaviors, including liability to neurological diseases such as autism, bipolar disease, and schizophrenia? How do these causative genetic variants modify a nervous system? Besides their role in disease, genetic variation is the substrate for natural selection. To understand how behavior evolves, we must understand how it varies.

Brian Hammer's lab studies molecular mechanisms important for microbial interactions. Bacteria are genetically encoded with regulatory networks to integrate external information that tailors gene expression to particular niches. Bacteria use chemical signals to orchestrate behaviors that facilitate both cooperation and conflict with members of the communities they inhabit. The group uses genetics and genomics, biochemistry, bioinformatics, and ecological approaches with a focus on the waterborne pathogen Vibrio cholerae.