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BGSA Officers

President

Anuraag Mukherjee

Anuraag is a 3rd year EEOB student in Servedio lab. He uses a theoretical framework to address questions in evolution, especially surrounding sexual selection and mate choice. In his free time, he plays chess and is an avid soccer fan. Recently he is also exploring American football.

anuraagm@unc.edu

 

 

Vice President

Audrey Thomas

Audrey is a a first year QBio PhD student in the Ahmed Lab studying telomere biology and applications towards cancer formation. In my free time, I enjoy reading about stem cells, aggressively competing in volleyball tournaments, or conversating with my huge pitbull, energetic beta fish, and my 2 frizzled hamsters.

audreyt@unc.edu

 

Secretary

Susana Cadavid Palacio

I’m in Senay Yitbarek’s lab, or we call our lab “The Hoi Polloi lab” (https://hoipolloi.io/) My research focuses on understanding population dynamics in hots-pathogen and high-order interactions. Outside of academia, I like spending time with my dogs and going for long walks in the forest and trails, cooking, embroidering and painting.

susanacp@unc.edu

 

Treasurer

Shelby Oliveaux

Shelby is a second year PhD student in Karin Pfennig’s lab interested in systematics, phylogenetics, morphological variation.
oliveaux@unc.edu

 

 

 

Faculty Representative

Alex Doolittle

Alex is a second year PhD student in the Yitbarek lab studying competitive interactions and community structure in microbial communities with a focus on mycorrhizal fungi.

adoolitt@ad.unc.edu

 

 

GPSG Representatives

Jonah Kotzen

Jonah is a first-year PhD student in David Pfennig’s lab studying the ecological and evolutionary consequences of phenotypic plasticity, with a focus on how morphological variation influences feeding performance and adaptation in spadefoot toads. His broader interests include functional morphology, biomechanics, and feeding ecology. Outside of research, Jonah enjoys wildlife photography, video games, thrifting, rollerblading, and exploring the outdoors.

jkotzen@unc.edu

Karl Hill

 

Web Master

Dalia Chen

Dalia is a second year PhD student in the Mitchell lab studying pathogen-pathogen and host-pathogen interactions in the host plant tall fescue. In her free time she likes to bake and play video games.

daliac@unc.edu

 

 

Social Coordinator

Nicolas Frasson      

Nico is a 5th year PhD student from France in Dr. Keith Sockman’s lab and BGSA social coordinator. I am broadly interested in physiological tradeoffs between migration behavior and reproductive strategies / survival in Lincoln’s Sparrows, a tiny passerine bird breeding in the high-elevation Colorado mountains. Outside research, I love pretty much all sports (basketball, tennis, ski, rugby, wakeboard), hiking in national parks, traveling, and socializing around great wine/cheese.

nfrasson@unc.edu

 

 

SSC Liaison

Tab Henry   

Tab Henry, Safe Spaces Committee Liaison, 3rd year PhD student in the Burmeister lab. I investigate the neural and behavioral differences in spatial cognition between juvenile and adult poison frogs (Dendrobates auratus), aiming to understand how factors like sexual maturity impact the development of navigation. Outside of research, I enjoy gardening, trying out new crafts, and spending time with my many pets!

tabhenry@unc.edu

First Year Representative

Pranav Pradhan

Pranav is a 1st year EEOB student in the Hedrick Lab of Comparative Biomechanics, obsessed with teasing apart the biomechanics of high-speed aerial predation. He’s after the split-second mechanics of chases and agile turns, but don’t picture him at the wetlab: it’s been ages since he touched a pipette. He lives on his desktop, building slick analysis pipelines, crafting publication-ready visualizations, and wrangling datasets with cool software instead of fussing with pricey hardware.

Off the screen he’s just as strategic and competitive: you’ll catch him playing or watching chess, chasing a cricket ball, or trading shots on the pickleball court. Curious, computational, and unpretentiously brilliant at turning messy data into clear stories.