Jeon, Jong Yoon

I am a Harvard Environmental Fellow, funded by the Harvard University Center for the Environment, and am affiliated with the Edwards Lab at the Museum of Comparative Zoology and the Cavender-Bares Lab at the Harvard University Herbaria. I am broadly interested in conservation genomics and molecular ecology, with a particular focus on advancing the use of genomic approaches in conservation.

Amphibians were my primary study taxa through my Master’s research. During my Ph.D., I expanded my work across vertebrates, from fish to mammals, using landscape genomic approaches, and I now work primarily with birds. For example, the final chapter of my Ph.D. dissertation examined local adaptation in Montezuma quail and its future under climate change using landscape pangenomics, ecological niche modeling, and simulations.

I consider myself a question-driven rather than taxon-driven researcher, with broad interests in how climate change, habitat loss, and other anthropogenic pressures shape biodiversity. More generally, I am interested in questions across conservation science wherever evolutionary and genomic approaches can provide useful insights. In my current postdoctoral research, I am working to quantify rates of adaptation to environmental change and translate this information into conservation practice. 

I was also a writer of an award-winning book (written in Korean though) that described my own experience of Peruvian Amazon rainforest.

Research Focuses: Conservation science, Molecular ecology, Evolutionary biology, Landscape pangenomics, Local adaptation