Dr. Suzana Gonçalves Leles (she/her)

I am joining UT Austin as an Assistant Professor in August 2025. As a biological oceanographer, I seek to answer fundamental questions that relate biodiversity and eco-evolutionary dynamics to microbial species distribution and ecosystem functioning.

By combining theory, numerical modeling, and empirical data, I study fine-scale cellular processes that can impact ecosystems and large-scale biogeochemistry. As a Latina, international, and first-generation college student, I am very excited to foster a lab that welcomes all!

Dr. Hairong Xu (she/her)

I am a postdoctoral researcher whose research focuses on developing mechanistic and data-driven models to understand how microbial processes regulate elemental cycling in natural systems. By integrating microbial ecology with ocean and environmental biogeochemistry, I aim to improve predictions of microbial dynamics and nutrient transformations across spatial and temporal scales. My work combines numerical modeling, data assimilation, and observational constraints to better connect small-scale biological processes with large-scale biogeochemical patterns.

Dr. Christopher Peterson (he/him)

I am a postdoctoral researcher who uses quantitative methods to understand how populations and communities respond to global change. As an evolutionary ecologist, his research is generally not pinned to specific taxa or systems, and I have worked on questions as disparate as anole population distributions, rapid adaptation in stickleback, coral epigenetic inheritance, and long-term plant-insect interactions in boreal forests. I am excited to be working with the MMAR lab on developing proteome allocation models of mixotrophic plankton.