Kira Delmore
Kira is the PI in the lab. She obtained her BSCH, MA and PhD at universities in Canada (Queen’s University, Universities of Calgary and British Columbia) before spending 3 years as a Postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in northern Germany. Her research is motivated by understanding where diversity originated in the natural world and how it is maintained. She is inspired by the varied ways in which hybrid zones can be used to understand this topic.
Bird she is most like: Snowy owl
Email: ked2195@columbia.edu; Phone: 979-900-2129
Postdocs
Gina Calabrese
Gina is a Postdoc in the lab. She received an NSF PRFB in Fall 2022. She is sponsored by Dr. Delmore and two other PIs – Drs. Rebecca Safran and Jochen Wolf. Gina studies the evolution of behavior and how behavioral traits contribute to adaptation and speciation. This line of inquiry has led her to work on a variety of topics throughout her Masters (University of Texas at Austin) and PhD (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) including sensory ecology, reinforcement, and how mating signals are responding to climate change. Her postdoc work studies how migration behavior contributes to speciation, including broad phylogenetic patterns and the genomic signatures of divergence across migratory divides in Barn Swallows. Gina is also passionate about teaching and has extensive experience and professional development in evidence-based and inclusive teaching in Biology.
Audrey Miller
Audrey joined the lab in Fall 2026 through the Columbia Science Fellows program—working as a lecturer for the "Frontiers of Science" course and continuing to pursue research at the intersection of sensory ecology and animal behavior. Before coming to Columbia, Audrey was a post-doctoral researcher at Princeton University in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department where she also completed her doctoral work. Audrey is interested in exploring the spatial and temporal dimensions of colorful animal signals while also developing methods for quantifying dynamic visual signals, combining scientific imaging with 3D modeling and animation. She plans to investigate iridescence and flight behavior in the acrobatic courtship displays of Black-chinned and Ruby-throated hummingbirds.
Email: aem2339@columbia.edu
sam hirst
Sam joined the Delmore Lab as a Postdoctoral Researcher in Winter 2026 after completing his Ph.D. in Integrative Biology at the University of South Florida. There, he examined how island biogeography theory can be used to predict trait complexity and genetic diversity, focusing on venom evolution in rattlesnakes from Baja California and the islands of the Gulf of California. In the Delmore Lab, Sam will investigate how structural variants shape seasonal migration and contribute to reduced hybrid fitness in the Swainson’s thrush. He’s looking forward to trading scales for feathers as he continues exploring how traits evolve across species and populations.
Bird he is most like: American robin
Email: srh2222@columbia.edu
Rachael Herman
Rachael joined the lab as a Postdoctoral Researcher in Fall 2025. She previously held an NSF Office of Polar Programs Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Stony Brook University, where she investigated epigenetic variation in Antarctic penguins. She also completed her PhD at Stony Brook, using population genomics and ecological modeling to explore mechanisms of range expansion in gentoo penguins. Rachael is now taking a break from the icy south to focus on a new system: the eastern purple martin. She is investigating and quantifying epigenetic potential across northern and southern breeding populations of this charismatic aerial insectivore. A lifelong bird enthusiast, Rachael looks forward to bringing her genomic and ecological expertise to this vibrant yet declining bird species and expanding her research beyond the polar regions.
Bird she is most like: Great-horned owl
Email: rwh2140@columbia.edu
Graduate students
Sope Adeniji
Sope joined the lab as a Research Technician in the summer of 2022 after completing her Masters as Auburn University. She has stayed on as a PhD student in the Biology Department at Texas A&M. Sope is pioneering work on the epigenetics of seasonal migration in our lab.
Bird she is most like: American kestrel
Email: odadeniji@bio.tamu.edu
ALYSSA NOWIcKI
Lyss joined the lab as a PhD student in 2025. They earned their Bachelor of Arts in Biological Sciences from Cornell University; their undergraduate thesis focused on the effects of latitude and land cover on productivity in kestrels. Lyss is interested in how environmental conditions influence avian ecology and behavior, especially in the context of climate change and human-driven habitat alteration. For their PhD, they will be studying the role of environmental cues and epigenetic expression in shaping the migratory behavior of Purple Martins.
Bird they are most like: Raven
Email: arn2160@columbia.edu
PELLE SCHOLTEN
Pelle joined the lab as a PhD student in Fall 2026. Pelle earned a double-degree in evolutionary biology from University of Montpellier and University of Groningen as part of the MEME programme. For his theses he studied genome size evolution in Papilionidae butterflies, asexuality in Artemia brine shrimp, and the human BRCA1-RNU2 region as a supergene. He is interested in using genomics to detect the fundamental processes of evolution in nature. In the Delmore lab Pelle will use the Swainson's thrush hybrid zone to study ecological divergence in migration in relation to both the genomics of speciation as well as the consequences of hybridisation.
Bird he is most like: A Yellow-billed magpie
Email: pjs2217@columbia.edu
Rachel Urban
Rachel is a PhD student in the lab. She started her PhD in the Biology Department in the fall of 2023. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Biology from Butler University in Indianapolis, where she completed her undergraduate thesis on seasonal plasticity in butterfly wing patterns. Rachel is fascinated by color and will be studying the reproductive barriers (including male iridescent gorget color) between Ruby-throated and Black-chinned hummingbirds utilizing data from hybrid zones in Texas and Oklahoma.
Bird she is most like: Northern mockingbird
Email: rurban@tamu.edu
Tori Wiley
Tori is a Visiting PhD Scholar in the lab. She uses tools in conservation genomics and ecotoxicology to investigate an avian Neotropical migrant, the Purple Martin. Specifically, her dissertation focuses on evolutionary divergence between three Purple Martin subspecies using genomic, bioacoustic, and morphometric analyses, as well evaluating their exposure to toxicants. She has a special interest in integrating avian migration research with conservation applications.
Bird she is most like: Northern mockingbird
Email: vaw33@nau.edu
Shasta Corvus
Shasta joined the lab as a PhD student in 2024 after finishing their Masters at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Shasta is interested in understanding ways in which anthropogenic disturbances, especially climate change, affect avian ecology and evolution. Following their interests, they have joined the lab to investigate the consequences of temperature on migration timing in Purple Martins.
Bird they are most like: Bluejay
Email: shasta.corvus@tamu.edu
An Na Vi
An Na joined the lab in the fall of 2025 as a lab technician. She earned her B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Michigan in 2024, where she researched face learning in paper wasps, as well as studied functional traits of trees in temperate forests.
Broadly, she is interested in how genomics can be used to study populations’ responses to environmental stressors and global change. They are also passionate about improving science education and public engagement in local ecology.
Bird they are most like: Red-tailed hawk
Email: av3391@columbia.edu
Undergraduate students
Bertha Saucedo
Bertha is an undergrad in the lab. She is majoring in Environmental Biology and Environmental Science with a minor in Sustainability. She joined the lab in Spring 2026 and has been working on preparing feather samples for spectrometry analysis as part of the hummingbird speciation research on Ruby-throated and Black-chinned hummingbirds. She will also be learning how to operate the spectrometer and use it to analyze feather coloration.
Harriette Kost
Harriette is a sophomore Sustainable Development major. She joined the lab in 2026 and is currently helping Rachel quantify iridescent color in male hummingbird gorget feathers. In the future, she hopes to support a variety of sustainable business and conservation initiatives.
Ethan Hu
Ethan is an undergrad in the lab. He is an Applied Math major with a Computer Science minor. He joined the lab during Summer 2026 and has been working on quantifying epigenetic potential in Purple Martins.
Alumni
Evelien deGreef
Evelien completed her MSc in the lab. She was co--supervised by Kevin Fraser from the University of Manitoba. And pioneered the work on Purple martins in our lab, describing population structure and demography in the eastern subspecies and undercovering genomic regions that underlie variation in their migratory timing. Evelien is currently working as a bioinformatician in the Garroway lab at the University of Manitoba.
Steph Blain
Steph wass a Postdoc in the lab. She joined in Fall 2022 and was interested in the processes driving early stages of divergence between populations and species. She tackled these questions using the Swainson’s thrush and has since moved on to work for the the Ministry of Natural Resources in Ontario.
Sarah Vastani
Sarah was a Masters student in the lab. She joined in Spring 2024 from the Math Department and brought machine learning techniques to questions of survival and migration in the lab. She is currently working as a research technician at Texas A&M University.
Matt McKim Louder
Matt was a Postdoc in the lab. He studied Behavioral Ecology during his MS and PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Neurobiology and Genomics during his postdoctoral training at East Carolina University, University of Illinois, and the University of Tokyo. His research focuses on understanding the genetic and neural mechanisms that guide behavioral development and how this process influences phenotypic diversification. Matt is currently working as a financial forecaster…a bit of a change but still employing some of the analytical approaches from his research!
Flavia Termignoni
Flavia was a Postdoc in the lab. She joined in the winter of 2024 and studied genomic shock in thrushes. She is on a mission to uncover the molecular evolutionary secrets of our feathered friends but recently took a detour to study these secrets in fishes as a Postdoc in Gil Rosenthals lab.
Hannah Justen
Hannah completed her PhD in our lab at Texas A&M after finishing her Masters at Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel in Germany. Hannah powered a tremendous amount of the migration tracking work in our lab and matched it with pioneering work on the genomics of migration and speciation. She is currently a Postdoc in Eva Fisher’s lab at UC Davis.
Lauren Doellinger
Lauren was a Masters student in the lab. She joined in Fall 2023 and pioneering work on mito-nuclear interactions in our lab.