Jeff is a Professor in the Department of Biology at UMass. His research focuses on vocal behavior and evolution in songbirds, and he has active research projects in the US, Ecuador, and Brazil. Click on the "research" tab above to read more about lab activities and interests. Most every fall Jeff teaches an upper-level majors class in Animal Behavior, and in spring semesters he teaches a class on Writing in Biology. For almost two decades he co-taught a non-majors, general education course on the Biology of Social Issues. From 2011-2018, Jeff served as Graduate Program Director and Leader for the Organismic and Evolutionary Biology (OEB) graduate program. He is presently executive co-editor for Advances in the Study of Behavior, and editor for Behavioral Ecology & Sociobiology. Jeff has served twice on the Executive Committee of the Animal Behavior Society, including a stint as society President in 2017-18.

Laura (she/her) is co-advised by Dr. Kristina Stinson and Dr. Richard Sherwin (of Christopher Newport University). Within the scope of the Podos lab, she is studying the colony structure and dynamics of Townsend's big-eared bats (Corynorhinus townsendii). To do this she is using a variety of methods and technologies, including: radio telemetry, passive integrated transponder tags (PIT tags), novel & historic roost survey data, next generation sequencing, and geographic information systems. Laura hopes that her research will help wildlife biologists to better understand mechanistic associations between this species and the natural and human-created subterranean roosting habitat available to them in Nevada, USA. 

João is broadly interested in the evolution of communication traits involved in mate choice. More specifically, João wishes to understand what role the physical environment plays in the evolution of sexual signals. João is originally from Brazil and earned his Master’s degree from the University of São Paulo, where he studied the evolution of bird gestural displays using phylogenetic comparative methods. João recently experienced a near-brush reckoning with his own mortality as he consumed his first ever bag of Funyuns (TM) without easy access to a medical facility. * Follow João on Twitter!