Postdoctoral Fellow

Laura Mendez came to us after finishing her PhD at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in summer 2025. She leads the flight biomechanics projects in the lab, mentors students, and teaching comparative vertebrate anatomy. Laura loves her cat Milo, swimming, and swallows.

Students/Mentees currently in the nest

Ally Zimmerman leads a project studying House Sparrow maneuverability.

Ash Martinez is into natural history museums and has photographed and measured many bird skeletal specimens, and is also working on flight biomechanics.

Charlie Menzel is studying the flight biomechanics of Eastern Bluebirds and Tree Swallows at their nests.

Hibat Gillani is studying if and how flight muscle size co-evolves with courtship displays across birds.

 
two kids look at a bluebird nest box

Assistant managers

Aspen and Elaenia

My kids, Aspen (7) and Laeni (5), assist with various lab projects, including checking nest boxes, catching House Sparrows, and teaching students how to ID birds. They love showing students how to pick fresh fruit and veggies in our garden and discussing dinosaurs and Minecraft.

 

Fledged Students/Mentees

Aidan Cullen

Aidan is a birder extraordinaire, double major in International Studies and Environmental Studies, who collected an absurd amount of morphological data from museum specimens. She went on to serve in the Peace Corps.

Lera Lukianova

Lera was a Biology and English double major who loves all animals, but especially horses, and worked on the lab’s sexual dimorphism project. She went on to a graduate program on equine science at the University of Kentucky after graduating.

Frank Szaraz

Frank helped measure bones before discovering a love of plant genetics and evolution. She is headed to a Ph.D. program studying plants.

Liz Cramer

Liz, Adrian, and Olivia hold hornbill skulls at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History bird collection.

Liz worked on a project studying how sexual dimorphism in flight muscles affects vertical flight performance in House Sparrows. She went on to pursue a PhD in insect behavioral ecology.

Olivia Rataezyk

Olivia worked on a project studying the effects of tags on House Sparrow takeoff flight biomechanics and wrote an honors thesis on how sexual dimorphism in flight muscles affects vertical flight performance in House Sparrows. She has been known to catch flying House Sparrows out of the air with her bare hands.

Adrian Lee

Adrian is a birder extraordinaire who is interested in, in addition to all things bird, data science and grassland ecology. He wrote many lines of code for the lab to help clean up, organize, and analyze large datasets.

Abigail Garcia

Abigail worked on a project studying the effects of tags on House Sparrow flight biomechanics, and is enthusiastic about dissections and dermestid beetles (I love this about her). After graduation, she worked for Massachusetts Audubon Society.

Eras Yager

Eras worked on a project studying flight performance in free-flying wild Eastern Bluebirds, and helped out with numerous other projects in the lab. She went on to attend medical school.

Preston, Jonah, Katherine, Natalie, and Katya at the US Botanical Gardens in Washington, DC, while on a trip to measure bird skeletal specimens at the US National Museum of Natural History.

Katya NapHtali

Katya started working in the lab their 1st semester at Kenyon, and has helped out on too many projects to list here. They are pursuing jobs in science communication, outreach, and education.

Jonah Dominguez

I met Jonah when he visited Kenyon as a high school student. He joined the lab immediately upon his arrival and stuck with me through the trials of 2020 and beyond to write an honors thesis on sexual diomorphism in locomotor structure in birds. Jonah went on to pursue a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Katherine Crawford

Katherine started doing research in my lab her first semester at Kenyon, and stuck with me through the trials of 2020 and beyond to write an honors thesis on the effects of small tags (like GPS transmitters, proximity loggers, or radio trackers) on flight takeoff biomechanics in House Sparrows. She went on to pursue a master’s in museum studies and then a PhD in ornithology at the University of Kansas.

Will Harrigan

Will worked on a project studying flight performance in free flying wild Tree Swallows. He went on to pursue a PhD in biology at the University of Hawaii.

Preston Pennington

Preston was a math major who discovered a love for ecology and evolutionary biology late in his career at Kenyon. He started helping out with research in my lab his senior year, and went on to graduate school in Biology at the Washington University in St. Louis.

Sarah McPeek

Sarah wrote an honors thesis on sexual dimorphism in flight performance in Eastern Bluebirds. Sarah is interested in all things related to ecology, evolution, and natural history. She is a skilled science communicator who wrote about Kenyon critters for the student entertainment newspaper and started a science literary magazine at Kenyon. Sarah went on to pursue a PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of Virginia.

Silas Kotnour

Silas wrote an honors thesis with me that was published in Ornithology. They were inspired by a paper by Ken Dial (2003) on how bird life history and flight investment are interrelated, and decided to try to test the theory proposed in this paper. Silas was accepted to several prestigious veterinary schools and seminary programs, and decided to attend seminary.

Hannah Wedig

Hannah conducted research for credit in my lab and went on to veterinary school.

Hannah, Sarah, and Silas hold a penguin skull, tarsometatarsi, and wing bones while collecting data at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History bird collection.

Christine Peterson

After an entire summer as a field technician in Arizona with me, Christine, a student at University of Montana, had not had enough of studying baby birds, so she worked with me to analyze the data we collected. Christine conducted her undergraduate senior thesis project on flight ontogeny in songbirds, trying to understand when juvenile zebra finches are capable of performing adult-style flight. Christine is now a seasonal field technician.

Ashley Smiley

I advised Ashley on her undergraduate research project at University of New Mexico on bird heart morphology in hypoxia from 2010-2014. Ashley went on to a PhD in Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley.

Erika Pohl

Erika was a field assistant on my 2013 expedition to Trinidad and Tobago. I trained her in field ornithology and collecting methods. Erika went to veterinary school at Colorado State University and is now a small animal veterinarian.

Nick Wilson

Nick was a field assistant on my 2013 expedition to Trinidad and Tobago. I trained him in field ornithology and collecting methods. He is now a research technician in ecology research labs at the University of New Mexico.

EricaRose Egan

I trained EricaRose in molecular laboratory methods and advised her on her senior thesis on genetic divergence in populations of birds in Trinidad and Tobago at the University of Florida. EricaRose is now a biological technician for the USDA.

Jonno Morris

I trained Jonno in museum specimen preparation when he was an undergraduate at the University of Florida. Jonno helped describe a new species of flightless rail from the Bahamas. He went on to pursue a graduate degree in conservation ecology at the University of Michigan.