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Ben Winger | Principal InvestigatorView Ben Winger's Curriculum Vitae
Ben is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Curator of Birds in the Museum of Zoology at the University of Michigan. He is an evolutionary biologist and ornithologist with broad and diverse interests in avian evolution, ecology and behavior. Ben earned his PhD in 2015 from the University of Chicago and his BA in 2007 from Cornell University. Contact: wingerb [at] umich.edu |
Graduate Students
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Susanna Campbell | PhD Student (2017- )Susanna is co-advised by Ben Winger and Dr. Liliana Cortes-Ortiz. She is studying introgression and hybridization in birds, as well as the influence of seasonal migration on the adaptive immune system in birds. Susanna completed her Masters degree in EEB at the University of Michigan in 2017 and attended University of Maryland, Baltimore County for her undergraduate degree.
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Matt Hack | PhD Student (2021-)Matt is interested in the factors shaping geographic range and distribution in migratory birds, and the responses of their distributions to global change. Before joining the Winger Lab, he spent a year with the USGS Eastern Ecological Science Center, studying the nesting ecology of terns in the Chesapeake Bay. Matt graduated from Yale University in 2020, where he studied phylogeography of South American birds.
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Eric Gulson-Castillo | PhD Student (2018-)Eric is interested in the ecology and evolution of avian movements and is studying the evolution of avian magnetoreception for his dissertation. Prior to beginning graduate school, Eric spent a year in Indonesia on a Fulbright scholarship, researching Sulawesi’s unique starlings and hornbills. He graduated from Cornell University in 2015 and has since done field work in far-flung places, with a focus on Bornean birds. He has done research on thermoregulation, morphology, and natural history.
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Teresa Pegan | PhD Student (2017- )Teresa graduated from Cornell University in 2015. Her past research experiences have included working with solar-powered radio tags on Tree Swallows, observing the natural history of Bornean birds, and studying a new population of Cliff Swallow breeding in South America. She is interested in when and why birds disperse, what influences dispersal limitation, and how these factors affect evolution. She particularly enjoys learning about tropical forest birds, especially those in Southeast Asia.
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Kristen Wacker | PhD Student (2019- )Kristen graduated from the University of Chicago in 2017. Prior to joining the Winger Lab, she worked at the The Field Museum in Chicago for two years, where she used molecular approaches to study the phylogenomics, population genetics, and pathogens of endemic birds from Madagascar. She is interested in genomics and avian microevolution, particularly how birds are responding to the intensive selection pressures of the Anthropocene.
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Postdocs
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Dr. Abby Kimmitt| Postdoctoral FellowAbby is an integrative biologist interested in how animals cope with the challenges of seasonal environments. She investigates both the proximate mechanisms underlying seasonal behaviors, such as migration and reproduction, and the evolutionary consequences of variation in these behaviors. She joined the Winger lab as a postdoc in EEB in 2021 to study the relationship between seasonal migration and evolutionary processes in birds. Abby received her PhD from Indiana University, Bloomington in 2019.
Website: www.abbykimmitt.com |
Lab Affiliates
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Dr. Brett Benz | UMMZ Ornithology Collection Manager Brett began as the Collection Manager of the UMMZ bird collections in 2019 and is also an Assistant Research Scientists in EEB. He is a leading expert on the taxonomy and distribution of the birds of New Guinea, and conducts active collections-based research throughout New Guinea. He received his PhD and B.S. from Kansas University. Prior to joining the UMMZ, Brett was a research scientist at the American Museum of Natural History.
Staff website: https://lsa.umich.edu/eeb/people/collections-staff/brett-benz.html |
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Dr. Jacob Berv| Postdoctoral Fellow, Life Sciences InsituteJake is a UM Life Sciences Fellow, working with several PIs in EEB (Stephen Smith, Dan Rabosky and Ben Winger) and the Museum of Paleontology (Matt Friedman). Jake completed his PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology at Cornell University in 2019, where he studied the phylogeography of neotropical birds, as well as higher level patterns of bird macroevolution. At Michigan, Jake hopes to continue investigating these research foci through a combination of genomic and paleontological approaches.
Google Scholar profile |