Laurie Stevison

Academic Career

I have 20+ years of independent research experience starting with a summer biomedical program at LSU, which led to a co-first authored publication (Stevison et al 2004) with my mentor Dr. Mohamed Noor, who eventually became my PhD advisor. In my master’s with Dr. Michael Kohn, I mentored undergrads and established independent collaborations to collect primate samples for my thesis at Rice University. During my PhD at Duke, I secured an NSF-DDIG, which funded a sole authored paper (Stevison 2012). As a postdoc at UCSF, I was awarded an NIH NRSA for my research with my mentor Dr. Jeff Wall. As early career faculty, I received the NIH MIRA award, which currently funds my lab.

Since starting as faculty in 2015, I have built a strong lab group with 4 current graduate students. I have completed 3 postdoc, 3 PhD, and 2 MS trainees. I have also trained 80 undergraduates, several of whom have co-authored publications. Former trainees have secured jobs in both academia and industry, and I have received multiple mentoring awards. Through integration of research and teaching, several students have also co-authored research papers from my courses. I have also published a digital textbook in Bioinformatics. 

At Auburn, I have served in various leadership roles, including chair of the 'Evolutionary Genetics and Systematics' research core group, which included leading a faculty search in 2024. I have also served as the assessment coordinator for our graduate certificate in Computational Biology since 2024. Beyond Auburn, I have twice organized the Southeastern Population Ecology and Evolutionary Genetics (SEPEEG) conference, a regional conference in evolutionary genetics. I also review an average of five journal articles per year. As part of my involvement in professional societies, I mentor students at conferences. In 2022, I joined the 'Access Inclusion & Community’ through Society for Study of Evolution and served a two year term as co-chair starting in 2024. I have also served as session chair at various conferences.

Auburn's Land Grant Mission

As a faculty member in Alabama, the land grant mission of the university is central to my role as an educator. I have a passion for sharing my knowledge as an expert in my field with the residents of Alabama. 

In teaching STEM, I aim to foster a sense of belonging in my students so they feel welcome in the classroom setting. It is important to not only teach the science, but also to highlight the people who did this work. From my textbooks, I highlight examples of scientists that had major contributions to their fields. This includes role models like Dr. Tsuneko Okazaki and her husband who discovered how DNA replication works. It also includes examples like Alfred Sturtevant who skipped his exams as an undergraduate to build the first genetic map, making his success relatable to students. In teaching and mentoring, I try to remind my students that we are all human and humans make mistakes. So, to be rigorous in science we need to do things over and over again and make sure our work is reproducible. I try to get to know the undergraduates in my lab and help all of my trainees make connections within the field so they have a strong network of other scientists when they leave the lab. Being a first generation college graduate myself, I value these connections, which were crucial for me to learn to navigate academia over the years, while still being myself. 

Finally, as a lab, we are dedicated to making an inclusive space that is welcoming to anyone who wants to experience research. All students who join the lab are provided a transparent set of expectations, which includes treating others with respect and dignity but also maintaining the rigor of science.

Committment to Open Science

Beyond my commitment to teaching and research, I am also committed to advancing transparency, reproducibility, and accessibility in scientific research through comprehensive open science practices. I have adopted a multi-faceted approach to open scholarship, with (1) public code and datasets underlying my publications, (2) open-access publishing whenever possible, and (3) depositing preprints to accelerate scholarly communication that prioritizes speed and transparency alongside rigor. Beyond making research outputs available, I am invested in sharing the methodological infrastructure that enables reproducible science through published protocols and study pre-registration. Together, these practices reflect my belief that open science is not merely an ethical obligation but a practical necessity for accelerating discovery, fostering collaboration, and ensuring that publicly funded research serves the public good. By modeling these practices, I also aim to train the next generation of scientists to view transparency and accessibility as foundational principles rather than optional add-ons to the research enterprise.