UROP Project

speciation, behavioral evolution, neurobiology, computational biology, modeling
lemmon.jpg
Research Mentor: Dr. Alan Lemmon,
Department, College, Affiliation: Scientific Computing, Arts and Sciences
Contact Email: alemmon@fsu.edu
Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from mentor):
Research Assistant Supervisor Email:
Faculty Collaborators: Dr. Emily Lemmon
Faculty Collaborators Email: chorusfrog@bio.fsu.edu
Looking for Research Assistants: No
Number of Research Assistants: 2
Relevant Majors: Open to all majors
Project Location: On FSU Main Campus
Research Assistant Transportation Required:
Remote or In-person: In-person
Approximate Weekly Hours: 5-10,
Roundtable Times and Zoom Link: Wednesday, September 4, 7:00pm-7:30pm
https://fsu.zoom.us/j/91926530311

Project Description

The student will join a collaboration to compare neural and behavioral phenotypes across divergent populations using neural circuit model written in MatLab.

Research Tasks: The work involves performing runs to optimize model parameters to fit phenotype data and using 3D visualization to uncover evolutionary trajectories in high-dimensional parameter space.

Skills that research assistant(s) may need: Recommended but not required (just helpful): experience in programming any language.

Mentoring Philosophy

My approach toward mentoring is to welcome into my laboratory anyone with a passion for science, a willingness to work hard, and the ability to persevere. I have trained and mentored 25 undergraduates from all backgrounds during my 15 years as a faculty member in Biological Science at FSU. Most have gone onto professional programs—graduate, medical, or veterinary school—and to careers in academia, industry, and medicine.

Additional Information

When new undergraduate researchers join my lab, I meet with them individually to determine their backgrounds, experiences, aspirations, and career goals. Then we begin to lay out their pathways to attain these career goals. We discuss the key steps along their paths—how to make the right moves—to become a strong candidate for these future positions. We discuss the timing needed for each step and create multi-year plans with goals for each semester of their undergraduate careers. When students join my group, I immediately engage them in our diverse ongoing research projects. These activities span multiple branches of biology and include fieldwork , behavioral experiments, genetics labwork, computational bioinformatics bootcamp, and neuroscience experiments. My goal is to expose our undergraduate researchers to multiple branches of biology through our lab’s current projects, so that they can gain direct experience with the possible directions they could pursue in their future scientific careers in biology.

Link to Publications


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