Principal Investigator
John R. Paul, Ph.D.; Associate Professor and Department Chair (2024)
Master’s Graduate Students
Uyên Nguyễn, B.S., Nong Lam University, Vietnam, Bachelor of Engineering (Food Technology), 2016
Uyên comes to us from Vietnam, where she graduated from Nong Lam University with a Bachelor in Engineering, Food Technology. After graduating she was part of the founding cohort of Teach for Vietnam, working in underserved communities and running STEM clubs, and running a blog on Evolution. Uyên is picking up the Hawaiian Psychotria torch, using double-digest Restriction Associated DNA (ddRAD) for population genetic and phylogenetic inference of patterns of diversity and distribution. She is especially investigating cryptic diversity within this one endemic but locally widespread (across all the high islands) species.
Phoebe LaMountain, B.S., Virginia Commonwealth University, Environmental Studies, 2023
Phoebe comes to us from Virginia Commonwealth University, where she was a researcher in James Vonesh’s aquatic ecology lab for two years of her undergraduate degree, include time as an NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program. Phoebe managed to work on duckweed in an animal lab – much respect! (Hint: it always helps if the plant name has an animal name in it, the animal people get confused and thinks it’s ok to research that!). She founded the Ecological Society of America Strategies for Ecology Education, Diversity and Sustainability (SEEDS) chapter at VCU, and plans to continue her work her with the USF SEEDS chapter. Phoebe is settling into San Francisco and will be choosing her research path soon…stay tuned!
Maya Canapary, B.S., University of California, Los Angles, Environmental Science & Conservation Biology, 2020
Maya grew up in the foothills of Sierra Nevada near Yosemite, so it’s no surprise she is interested in the diversity and distribution of California plants. During and after her undergraduate career she gained extensive field experience working on plants in mountains and deserts of California, birds in southern Chile, and habitat restoration sites on the UCLA campus. Most recently she has been a biological technician at the Presidio Trust, working on habitat restoration. Maya started the MS in Biology program in Fall 2024 and is interested in working on rare plant species.
Undergraduate Researchers
Paavani Lella
Paavani grew up just a short ferry ride across the Bay, in Berkeley. Along with Uyen, she was a founding member of post-pandemic Paul Lab 2.0 in Fall 2022. Paavani is a first-generation college student with seemingly boundless energy and enthusiasm – a double major (Biology and Theology), double minor (Chemistry and Public Service & Community Engagement), and engaged in numerous volunteer activities and research positions, which luckily for us, includes in our lab. Paavani was a key player helping with various aspects Uyen’s Psychotria mariniana molecular ddRAD project, and was an awesome student in Prof. Paul’s 2023 Fall Ornithology class! If she ever has any down time, you can find Paavani snuggling with her pet birds. Paavani graduated in May 2024 – Congratulations! (But we haven’t pushed her into the lab alumni section yet because she’s still in the Bay and going to pull up!!)
Sophie Goubert
Sophie is from the Great Northwest, where she grew up walking the streets of Seattle, since she (still) doesn’t know how to drive. 😉 Sophie joined the lab in Spring 2023, because, imagine this, she actually was interested in plants! She quickly became a partner in crime with fellow Chemistry minor Paavani. Sophie helps the lab in various ways from plant propagation to molecular lab work for Uyen’s Psychotria mariniana ddRAD project. In the summer of 2024, she was also a field assistant for one of Dr. Suni’s graduate students, working on pollinators. Sophie is a member of the Honors College and used to maybe want to go into the health sciences…but we seemingly may have corrupted her as she plans to take a gap year and then head to graduate school in Biology – yes!! Sophie and Alex are currently gracing Prof. Paul’s Fall 2024 Ornithology class.
Alex Ibrahim
Alex hails from Napa where she grew up wandering the aisles of her parent’s market and foraging for olives and truffles in the picturesque golden California hills. She joined the lab just a month after Sophie in Spring 2023 and quickly became known for creating the most beautiful and organized excel data sheets that the world has ever seen! Her attention to detail will serve her well when she plans to start dental school after graduating from USF. Alex and Elsa worked closely together on a double-digest restriction-associated DNA (ddRAD) project. They did the molecular lab work on serpentine and non-serpentine samples of the Wiry Snapdragon from Nicole’s MS thesis project. And Alex loves working on plants, even if they don’t have any teeth!
Elsa Tippy
Elsa co
me to us from the Midwest, where, a little while ago, she got her BS at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Elsa went on the get a Master’s in Education at Columbia University, and then taught middle school science in New York and Chicago for seven years – wow! We are lucky that Elsa decided to pursue another BS degree here at USF and that she joined our lab in late Spring 2023. Elsa and Alex worked closely together on a double-digest restriction-associated DNA (ddRAD) project. They did the molecular lab work on serpentine and non-serpentine samples of the Wiry Snapdragon from Nicole’s MS thesis project. After finishing at USF, Elsa is interested in becoming a genetic counselor. She finds Prof. Paul’s dad jokes and puns especially hilarious, and hopes to someday be as funny as him.
Owen Swanson
Owen comes to us from Spokane, Washington, where he grew up immersed in nature and science, including getting a Jepson Manual for a high school graduation present – obviously he was destined for our lab! In fact, he started bothering Prof Paul about volunteering in the lab even before Orientation of his freshman year…and at Orientation…and at the Department mixer the following week. He ended up having Uyen as his General Biology lab TA and their teacher-student rivalry soon blossomed into being best friends once Prof Paul relented and let him join the lab in Spring 2024, in the 2nd semester of his freshman year. Owen loves getting out to the mountains and will be developing an independent project that lets him live in his truck and collect plants in obscure and beautiful locations…stay tuned!
Lab Alumni – Master’s Students
Nicole Ibañez, B.S., Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, 2016, M.S. in Biology, University of San Francisco, 2023
Nicole graduated from Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo, where she was trained in field botany by great team of Jen Yost and Matt Ritter, so she knows her plants!! Since graduating, Nicole has been working at an environmental consulting firm in Sacramento. Nicole was housed in my lab but also co-advised by Sevan Suni and a member of her lab as well. She has research interests in California’s native flora and applied solutions to conservation problems. Nicole is using the California native, serpentine tolerator plant wiry snapdragon (Antirrhinum vexillocalyculatum, Plantaginaceae) as her model species to test the role of precipitation gradients in explaining the divergence of serpentine and non-serpentine populations. She collected seed and leaf tissue from 11 populations and brought them back to the lab for genetic analysis and the greenhouse for a flowering-time divergence experiment. Read more about her project and see photos from the field and greenhouse here.
Alec Chiono, B.S., University of California Davis, 2015; M.S. in Biology, University of San Francisco, 2021
Alec comes to us from UC Davis, where he graduated with honors (B.S. in Evolution, Ecology, and Biodiversity), and gained amazing research experience in a number of different positions: as an undergraduate researcher in the Rejmánková and Latimer labs; conducting an independent study in the Wainwright lab; as a research technician in the Strauss lab; and after graduation, as the lab manager of Jennifer Gremer’s lab for two years. Alec was also recently awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF-GRF). For his Masters, Alec tested an expansion of Janzen’s famous Climate Variability Hypothesis in coastal and inland Mimulus guttatus aka Erythranthe guttata/grandis populations! Alec collected seed from multiple populations, grew and crossed (within populations) an initial greenhouse generation, and then grew a second generation which he subjected to growth chamber experiments to describe the thermal tolerances of these populations. Read more about his project and see photos from the field and greenhouse here. UPDATE Fall 2021: Alec has started his PhD in Nancy Emery’s lab at University of Colorado, Boulder!!!
Tiffany Kho, B.A., Occidental College, 2017; M.S. in Biology, University of San Francisco, 2021
Tiffany worked with the native Hawaiian plant species, Psychotria mariniana. Of the 11 species of Psychotria found in the Hawaiian archipelago, P. marinaina is the most widespread, being found on all the major islands. Many other Hawaiian Psychotria are extremely rare, with many species restricted to a single island, or in the case of P. hobdyi and P. grandiflora, only the northwest corner of Kauai. These species are all very closely related – how has P. marinaina been so successful at expanding its range? Tiffany investigated the roles of dispersal, climate, and intra- and inter-island divergence on the range expansion and phylogeographic structure of this species. UPDATE Fall 2022: Tiffany is now a Client Data Specialist at Adaptive Biotechnologies! Go Tiffany!!
Nila Le, B.S., University of San Francisco, 2016; M.S. in Biology, University of San Francisco, 2019
Nila started as a Master’s student in Spring 2017, right after graduating from USF with a B.S. in Biology. She was an undergraduate researcher in our lab for two years. She is interested in conservation and the impact of climate change on species distributions. For her Master’s project, Nila studied the impact of recent climatic change on the distribution and range wide genetic diversity of the coastal perennial plant species Arabis blepharophylla. UPDATE Fall 2019: Nila is the new Conservation Geneticist at the California Botanic Garden, in Claremont, CA! Way to go Nila – best of luck preserving CA’s unique botanical diversity! And keeping up the good fight in the name of Erythranthe!!! UPDATE Fall 2024: Nila has been in the private sector for awhile and now works for the Biotechnology Company Dipendix!
Elaine Zhang, B.S., University of California – Santa Cruz, 2012; M.S. in Biology, University of San Francisco, 2016
Elaine worked on the molecular phylogenetics and climatic niche evolution of South Pacific Psychotria radiation, with an emphasis of understanding the patterns of distribution. After graduating, Elaine worked at a biotech startup in San Francisco for a couple of years, and recently became a research associate at the Innovative Genomics Institute at UC Berkeley! She will be working on using genomic engineering to save cacao crops (that’s chocolate people!!!) from climatic change – clearly this work is of global importance!! UPDATE Spring 2023: Elaine is now lab coordinator for NOBEL LAUREATE Jennifer Doudna’s (discoverer of CRISPER-CAS9) research lab at UC Berkeley! Try to get a selfie with the Nobel Prize!!! 🙂
Lab Alumni – Undergraduate Student Researchers
Cate Gwinn, Biology major, Biology Honor’s student, USF Class of 2021
Cate hails from the Great Northwest and joined the lab in Fall 2019. She is minoring in neuroscience and chemistry on top of her biology major, and she is an avid rock climber in her spare time. She plans to attend med school after graduating. She helped Alec with field work on Mimulus guttatus, and will be working in the greenhouse and molecular lab in Spring 2020 to complete her Honors Thesis. Cate is conducting a double-digest restriction-associated DNA (ddRAD) study on serpentine and nonserpentine populations of M. guttatus distributed on Mt. Tamalpais and the surrounding region. Are geographically close but ecologically distant populations connected by gene flow? UPDATE Fall 2023: Cate has started Medical school at the University of Washington – Go Cate!!!!
Alexandra Palacios, Biology major, Biology Honor’s student, USF Class of 2021
Alex grew up in L.A., came to USF and joined the lab in Fall 2018 in her sophomore year. She is interested in many facets of biology and is also minoring in Astronomy. Astrobiology anyone?? She helped Tiffany on her Psychotria mariniana sequencing project, doing many DNA extractions and PCR runs. In Fall 2019 she worked on microsatellites and a next generation sequencing project in Mimulus guttatus. Alex planned to do a molecular lab based Honor’s Thesis, but the 2020 pandemic threw a monkeywrench into her plans. But Alex persevered and pivoted to an analytical project modeling the responses of serpentine plants species to climatic change, integrating soil characteristic and climatic variables into ecological niche models, all from the comfort of her own home! How will serpentine plant species fare under climatic change? These species have very specific soil requirements, but may be adapted to more variable and extreme temperatures than their non-serpentine relatives.
Ralphyn Pallikunnath, Biology major, Biology Honor’s student, USF Class of 2020
Ralphyn grew up in the Bay Area and joined the lab in Fall 2019. She is interested in many areas of biology, particularly on the molecular side, and is minoring in neuroscience and chemistry, with an ultimate destination of med school. Ralphyn has been helping sequence herbarium samples of Psychotria and Palicourea, some of which have never been examined genetically before! For her Honors Thesis, Ralphyn conducted the first Paul Lab double-digest restriction-associated DNA (ddRAD) study on Psychotria, focusing on Tiffany Kho’s Psychotria mariniana samples from across the Hawaiian Islands. Do islands and mountain ranges structure the population genetics of this species? UPDATE Fall 2021: Ralphyn will be getting a Master’s in Public Health at Mt Sinai in NYC!
Hayat Elqossari , Biology major, USF Class of 2022
Hayat volunteered in the lab for one year, and learned various DNA extraction techniques and PCR protocols. She did a great job helping out Tiffany on her Psychotria mariniana project and was an coauthor on a Creative Activity and Research Day (CARD) poster and a poster Tiffany presented at the Hawaii Conservation Conference in July 2019. Thanks for all your hard work pipetting and PCRing!! Hayat went on to work in Chemistry labs for additional research experience.
Patrick Woods, B.S., University of San Francisco, 2017
Patrick comes to us straight out of the dairy fields of Lodi. Patrick went on an epic collecting adventure in the summer of ’17 to find the elusive geographic origins of the California poppy (Eschscholzia californica). He will be using population genetic approaches to infer the ancestral home of this species during the last glacial maximum. His inspirations are Slayer, Dewey, and Pizza. UPDATE Fall 2018: Patrick has started his Ph.D. with John McKay at Colorado State University! Go Patrick!! Go Rammies!! UPDATE Fall 2019: Patrick is busy doing whole chromosome comparisons of phased Cannabis genomes!! Leave no turn unstoned! UPDATE: Patrick finished his PhD in September 2023!! Congratulations!!! Patrick is currently Bioinformatics Research Manager at Plant Science Inc.!
Patricia Ilao, B.S., University of San Francisco, 2018
Patricia helped with molecular and plant growth work, and worked with Sebastian on the phylogenetic distribution of pharmacologically-active compounds across the clade Psychotrieae. Stellar student by day, knockout boxer by night – Watch out for the left hook! UPDATE Spring 2019: Patricia will be starting Pharmacy School at UCSF in Fall 2019 – go Patricia!! So happy to have you back in the Bay!!
Sebastian Beckley, B.S., University of San Francisco, 2017
Sebastian helped with molecular lab work and is spearheading the lab’s first RNA extraction of some central American Psychotria species. Sebastian also studied the phylogenetic distribution of pharmacologically-active compounds across the clade Psychotrieae, in collaboration with Patricia. Before he graduated, Nila taught him how to do the Whip and the Nae Nae. Update, Spring 2021: Sebastian is now a clinical research coordinator at the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mt Sinai in New York City!! Go East Young Man!! Enjoy the Big Apple and mail us some bagels!!
Nila Le, B.S., University of San Francisco, 2016
Nila worked in the lab from Fall 2014 to her graduation in December 2016. She helped in the molecular lab and plant growth facilities and researched the genetic structure and climatic niches of north coastal M. cardinalis populations. She went on to complete her MS in Biology in our lab – see Masters Alumni above! Current position: see above.
Undergraduate Research Assistants
Raven Rice, Environmental Sciences major, USF class of 2021
Trent LiVolsi, Biology major, USF class of 2023