Faculty

Dr. Sushma Reddy
PI, Associate Professor, Curator
Sushma is the Breckenridge Chair of Ornithology at the Bell Museum of Natural History and faculty in Fisheries, Wildlife, Conservation Biology at the University of Minnesota. She received her B.A. in Environmental Sciences from Barnard College and her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Her doctoral research, the evolution and biogeography of birds in southern Asia, was conducted mainly at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. She spent five years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, working on the tree of life of modern birds. Sushma was faculty at Loyola University Chicago from 2009-2018. 

Graduate Students

Anya Auerbach
​Ph.D. student
Contact: [email protected]
Anya is broadly interested in studying the dynamics of diversification over time using many lines of evidence, including genomics, biogeography, and morphometrics. She is also interested in science communication and teaching in classroom and museum settings. Anya graduated from the University of Chicago in 2019, where she wrote her undergraduate thesis on the biogeography of birds in the Northwest Himalayas. 

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Zheng 'Oz' Oong
​Ph.D. candidate
Oz is interested in the systematics and biogeography of birds in Southeast Asia. 
He received a B.A. in Integrative Biology from the University of California, Berkeley in 2018. and later worked as a curatorial and research assistant at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. He did a senior honors thesis on the phylogeography of Steller’s Jays (Cyanocitta stelleri) in the Western United States.

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Yi Fang 'Clare' Tan
​M.S. student
Clare is a Masters student in Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology. Her project is to analyze the genetics and spatial demographics of the Great Lakes Piping Plovers. She previously worked as a curatorial assistant for the bird collections of the Bell Museum where she spent her time organizing and preparing specimens, and taking care of the dermestid beetle colony. Clare is interested in wildlife field research and graduate school in the future. You can read more about her in this CFANS alumni feature.

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Sutirtha Lahiri
Ph.D. Student
Sutirtha is a Ph.D. student at the conservation science program, who joined in fall 2021. He is also the recipient of the Interdisciplinary Center for the study of Global Change (ICGC) Fellowship. Sutirtha received his BSc. from Delhi University and MSc. from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, India. He is interested in studying avian diversity and conservation in the Northeast of India. His previous work includes hornbill nest and roost monitoring, acoustic partitioning strategies in sympatric drongos and Passive acoustic monitoring and conservation of grassland birds. 
He is also an avid writer, and his bylines have appeared in major travel and conservation magazines. Find out more about his work here- https://sutirthalahiri.wordpress.com

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​In Memoriam

Lynika Strozier
M.S. in Biology, M.Ed. in Science Education
We lost Lynika in June 2020. She was an integral part of our lives for several years. She was truly exceptional with her hardworking attitude and cheery spirit. Her grandmother raised her and taught her never to give up. We are feeling this heartbreak personally and as a community. 
Her inspiring and tragic story resonated across the world. Scholarships in Lynika's honor to support young, Black women have been set up at the Field Museum, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Loyola University Chicago. You can read more about her in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Nature, The Scientist, The Today Show, and many more...

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Lab Alumni

Postdocs
Jane Younger  - currently at Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath (UK) 
V. V. Robin - currently at the Indian Institute for Science, Education, Research at Tripathi, India.
Arpi Nyari - currently at University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Graduate Students
Bobby Lauer - M.S. in Biology, Loyola University Chicago
Matt Bonfitto - M.S. in Biology, Loyola University Chicago
Lynika Strozier - M.S. in Biology, LUC , M.Ed, UIC
Heather Skeen - M.S., LUC, PhD University of Chicago

Undergraduate Researchers
Kaia Hilgendorf-Roost 2023-2024.
Shyanne Hall 2000-2023.
Anna Flucke 2022.
Khadija Mansoor 2017-2018.
Renee Perkowski  2017-2018. 
Drashti Upadhyay 2017-2018.
Phoenix Dempster 2017-2018.
Meghana Venkatesan 2017-2018.
Madeline Beasley 2017-2018.
Talitha O. Helms 2016-2017.
Rishikesh Savaliya 2016-2017.
Riya Patel 2016-2017. MPH, Washington University.
Salman Akthar 2016-2017. MD, Midwestern University.
Nicholas Souza 2016-2017.
Gira Patel 2016-2017.
Matthew Bonfitto 2015-2016. 
Nicole Gracias 2014-2016. MPH, New York University.
Sagar Chaudhary 2013-2015. MD, Loyola Stritch School of Medicine.
Kelly Boyd 2014-2015.
Emma Highland 2013-2015.
Amanda Misch 2013-2015.
Mustafa Broachwala 2013-2015.
Zuzanna Nowak 2013-2014. DVM, University of Wisconsin.
Jonathan Lo 2013-2014.
Kamil Slowikowski 2012. PhD, Harvard University.
Ted Vlahos 2010-2012. DVM, Perdue University.
Rohit Venkat 2011.
Bushra Alam 2011-2012. 
Julie Witkowski 2011-2012. MD, Rosalind Franklin University.
Mark Wojdyla 2011-2013. MD, Loyola Stritch School of Medicine.
John Juranek 2010-2012.
Michael Hanson 2010-2012. PhD, Yale University.
Laurel Yohe 2010-2011. PhD, Stony Brook University. Postdoc, Yale University. Yohe Lab at UNC-Charlotte.
Billy Zhao 2009-2010. MD, Loyola Stritch School of Medicine.
Sarah Sharief 2009-2011. MD, Midwestern University.

Post-bac Lab technicians 
Melody Truong
Kristen Wacker -  PhD candidate, University of Michigan.
Chris Kyriazis - PhD, University of California, Los Angeles.
Sarah Kurtis - PhD candidate, University of Florida.
Sarah Sharief - MD, Midwestern University.
Rachel Baker