I am an ecologist interested in understanding the causes and consequences of biodiversity change at scales ranging from individual organisms to the entire biosphere. I develop data-model synthesis frameworks that integrate remote sensing (e.g., LiDAR, hyperspectral imaging), field sampling, and ecological monitoring networks with Bayesian hierarchical models and Earth System models. I predict how remotely sensed habitats and climate change interact to drive biodiversity shifts, while also quantifying the feedbacks of biodiversity changes on carbon and water exchanges between land and atmosphere. Additionally, I study global forest regeneration potential and its critical role in shaping food web dynamics.

Prior to joining Duke University, I served as a tenure-track assistant professor at the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management at the Pennsylvania State University. I conducted postdoctral research with Dr. Jim Clark and Dr. Jennifer Swenson at the Nicholas School of the Environment. For my doctoral research, I worked with Drs. Conghe Song, Jim Clark, Erika Wise, Diego Riveros-Iregui, and Allen Hurlbert to understand how vegetation phenology is influenced by climate change, extreme weather events, and urbanization.

Xiaolu is interested in the interactions between plant phenology, terrestrial ecosystems, and the climate system. She uses a combination of ground observations, remote sensing records, statistical models, and Earth System models to (1) characterize the biodiversity-phenology-climate relationship and how it influences ecosystem functions; (2) quantify the feedbacks of species composition and ecosystem structure change to climate systems; (3) evaluate phenology variability and improve phenology modeling in Earth system models; (4) investigate impacts of phenological shifts on land-atmosphere interactions. She moves to Duke University after completing a one-year postdoc at Penn State in our lab. She worked with Dr. Toby R. Ault for her postdoctoral and dissertation research work.

Hanshi is a Ph.D. student in the University Program in Ecology (UPE) at Duke University. Before moving to Duke, she was a Ph.D. student in the Intercollege Graduate Degree Program (IGDP) in Ecology at Penn State. She studies how urbanization, climate warming, and habitat change interact to influence vegetation phenology. She is also interested in quantifying the subsequent impact of phenology changes on terrestrial ecosystem functions and services. She worked with Dr. Weiqiang Chen and Dr. Hua Cai at the Institute of Urban Environment at Chinese Academy of Sciences from 2021 to 2023 before joining the lab.

Yu Wei is an Environment Ph.D. student in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke university. Prior to joining Duke, she was a Ph.D. student in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management at Penn State. She studies structural and spectral diversity in the terrestrial ecosystems using combined LiDAR and hyperspectral remote sensing across different scales. She is also interested in applying deep learning and other advanced computing models to understand species composition under global change. She has a very strong background in remote sensing and worked with Dr. Mi Wang at the State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying Mapping and Remote Sensing (LIESMARS) at Wuhan University.

Guyu (Emily) Yang is a Master of Environment Management (MEM) students at the Nicholas School of the Environment. She worked as a researcher for the Insitute of Integrative Conversation at William & Mary, Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, and Virginia State Parks. She is interested in using remote sensing to study salt marshes and their roles in the coastal food webs, while also evaluating their changes over time.

Alexis Fox is a freshman at Duke University (Class of 2028). Alexis worked at UVA’s Biocomplexity Institute on research intersecting information theroy and generative AI. As a high school student, Alexis completed a draft that is currently under review for AAAI. The manuscript focused on analyzing current generative model metrics for output quality and proposing a novel metric differentiating inter- and intra-class diversity. She will work on the deep learning project that focused on fusing airborne and terrestrial laser scanning to facilitate the mapping of biodiversity in the eastern forests.

Max Xiong is a freshman at Duke University (Class of 2028). Max worked at Rutgers Univerisity flew a DJI phantom 4 drone over a corn farm in upstate New York. They use YOLO and Mask RCNN and identified harmful weeds within the cornfield, the health conditions of the corn, and a total count for how many corn crops. Max ranked top 3% at the united States of America Computing Olympiad (USACO) and had a first-author paper in IEEE Xplore on multi-spectral drone imagery and deep learning for corn assessment.