I am an Associate Professor at University of Minnesota. Main projects in the lab include population genomic studies on the cavefish which is funded by the Eppley Foundation for Research, the NIH, and NSF. Right now (as of summer 2024), I am most interested in how mutational biases and opportunities shape repeated evolution. 

My PhD work focused on heritability of temperature dependent sex determination in painted turtles with Fred Janzen at Iowa State. I did my first postdoc at Duke University with Mohamed Noor studying recombination and the role of inversions in species boundaries. For a second postdoc, I worked with Wes Warren at the WashU Genome Institute on the Mexican cavefish and garter snake genome projects. 

Some of my early work focused on conservation and population genetics on turtles in Cuatro Cienegas, Mexico - one of the most amazing places on Earth. 

Research Associate, Danielle Drabeck 

Danielle’s research focuses on using diverse approaches to understand the process of adaptive evolution, including the genomic, phylogenetic, and biochemical basis of adaptive traits across many study systems. She was supported by an NIH-funded IRACDA fellowship which will utilize new comparative genomic methods to characterize the assemblage of complex adaptations in cavefish at both inter- and intraspecific time scales. Her work also investigates the metabolic shifts involved in bear hibernation and the molecular basis of pit viper venom resistance in mammals.  Find her work here.

Postdoc, Emilie Richards

Emilie’s research focuses on the genetic basis of adaptation and the genomic consequences of hybridization. Her current work is an NIH-funded IRACDA fellowship where she is examining whether cavefish have worse DNA damage and repair than surface fish. She is also implementing comparative genomic approaches that leverage experimental and natural hybrids between cave and surface populations of A. mexicanus to uncover the genetic basis of the complex adaptations seen in the cave fish populations. These discoveries in hybrids can help address a range of interesting questions from why cavefish don’t develop sleep loss and have pathologies like those seen in humans to how predictable the genetic consequences of hybridization are when divergent genomes collide in extreme environments. Learn more about her research here.

Postdoc, Riley Kellermeyer

Riley just joined the lab from the Stowers Institute for Medical Research where she used admixed Astyanax mexicanus populations to uncover key genes involved in eye development. She is continuing to investigate the genetic basis of eye development while in the McGaugh lab. She is also currently working in collaboration with the San Antonio Zoo on mud turtle conservation genetics! 

PhD Student, Maya Enriquez

Maya received her Master's in Integrated Biosciences at the University of Minnesota Duluth with Dr. Allen Mensinger, and previously worked on sensory divergence in Texas populations of A. mexicanus. She started as a graduate student in Fall 2022 and is currently mapping the genetic basis of sleep loss in multiple populations of A. mexicanus.

Postbac student, Jin Oong

Jin is examining mutation spectrum in genomes of cave and surface fish to help us understand if different DNA repair mechanisms are more robust in cave versus surface fish. He is broadly interested in the diversification of vertebrates with a specific lens at the systematics, genomics, and biogeography of Southeast Asian birds and is going to graduate school in Fall 2025. 

Undergraduate, Jordynne Wohling

Jordynne is pursuing a degree in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior (minor in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies) to eventually study conservation biology/wildlife management. She is interested in animal behavior and how it shapes relationships between species within communities and larger ecosystems. Within the lab, she is working with Maya to analyze sensory differences between Astyanax mexicanus cave/surface populations and their hybrid offspring.

Undergraduate, Sarah Jacobson

Sarah is a Biology, Society, and Environment major pursuing minors in marine biology and statistics. In the lab, she is evaluating the differences in sleep behaviors of hybrid cave-surface fish. She is broadly interested in fish behavior and sensory ecology. 

Undergraduate, Kendall Dickson

Kendall is junior majoring in Biology, Society, and Environment, with a minor in Genetics. She will use bioinformatics to work out synteny maps for five genes involved in Type 2 diabetes present in fish species across 125 species. 

Undergraduate,  Brooklyn Lennes

Brooklyn is majoring in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior and minoring in Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology. She is primarily interested in the evolutionary ecology of mammals, many areas of ecology and evolution are of interest to her.  In the lab, she is investigating the orthology of genes involved in the sensory systems of teleost fish. 

Undergraduate,  Hannah Hoang

Hannah is double majoring in Genetics, Cell Biology, & Development and Ecology, Evolution and Behavior. She’s interested in how different mutations in the gene affects evolution in different species. In the Lab, she helps out with animal husbandry.

Undergraduate, Scarlett Anderson

Scarlett is pursuing majors in biochemistry and microbiology, and a minor in public health. She is interested in how evolutionary processes drive the specialization of traits. In the lab, she is analyzing sensory differences between cave, surface, and hybrid A. mexicanus populations. 

Postdoc, Melissa Drown

Mel's research focused on the role of complex trait evolution in organismal response to extreme environments. Her work was funded by a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and was focused on developing a genotype to phenotype to fitness map, which will be used to understand the role of pleiotropy in cavefish evolution. Learn more about her research here. She joined Oxford Nanopore as a field scientist! 

Postdoc, Rachel Moran

Rachel's research uses behavioral and genomic approaches to investigate the evolution of local adaptation, sexual selection, and speciation in fishes. She worked on an NIH-funded project (R01: Understanding complex trait architecture through population genomics; PI: McGaugh, Co-PIs: Alex Keene, Nick Rohner) using whole genome sequencing data to examine the genetic basis of convergent evolution across multiple lineages of cavefish.  Learn more here. She moved on to University of Chicago for an independent fellowship and started a faculty position at Texas A&M University in Winter 2023!

Undergraduate, Gwendolyn Weis

Gwendolyn is studying Genetics and Microbiology. Her research includes exploring DNA repair pathways in cavefish to compare results in surface populations. She joined in spring 2023 through the Dean Scholars Program. Gwen hopes pursue a career as a genetics laboratory technician. 

Undergraduate, Jonathan Wiese

Jonathan has been working on bioinformatics projects with the lab since Spring 2020. He is currently working on integrating quantitative trait loci and differential gene expression data across the Astyanax genome. Jonathan has now left the lab for University of Chicago to pursue a PhD in genetics!

Undergraduate, Cristian Hernandez

Cristian is broadly interested in evolutionary genetics and ichthyology. Within the lab, I am using computational tools to explore population demographics and hybridization in Astyanax mexicanus. Cristian is headed to graduate school in Fall 2025 where he will study conservation biology and computational biology.

Undergraduate, Alex Donny

Alex is helping us understand if neuromast size and distribution is affected in potentially rapidly evolving cavefish! She had her own UROP funded project on cavefish genomics in Fall 2019. She continued to work on the exon loss in cavefish and moved to in Molly Schumer's lab at Stanford University to conduct research as a technician. She is now a PhD student in the Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington Seattle. 

Undergraduate, Chloe Michalak 

Chloe helped with fish care and had a UROP funded project on cavefish genomics in Fall 2019. In summer 2019, she studied marine mammals in California. She started vet school in summer 2023 and is researching Canine Cognitive Dysfunction! 

Postdoc, Christine O'Connor  (co-advised with Candice Hirsch)

Christine received her PhD in evolutionary genetics at the University of Oregon with Patrick Phillips and will be working on a PGRP-funded postdoc (ECA-PGR: Dissecting Natural Mechanisms for Genome Content Variation and the Impact on Phenotypic Variation; PI: Hirsch, Co-PI: Yandeau-Nelson, McGaugh) to examine the role of copy-number and presence-absence gene content variation on maize phenotypes. She is now at the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute at the University of Minnesota as a data analyst.

Graduate student, Sam Weaver (co-advised with Ken Kozak)

Sam started as a graduate student in Fall 2016. He explored Honey Creek Cave in Texas to find recent cave-derived adaptations in Astyanax that were introduced into caves in the 1960s. He completed a super cool project on mud turtle conservation genetics with Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and a virtual Postdoc at Auburn University. He is now an Environmental Scientist with Burns & McDonnell. 

Masters student, Nate Swanson 

Nate worked on understanding behavioral and morphological trait evolution in three recently colonized cave populations of Astyanax.  Nate graduated with a M.S. degree from Conservation Sciences and started a PhD program in Fall 2022 at UC-Irvine!

Minnesota Supercomputing Institute-RIS consultant, Tom Kono

Tom (pictured with Ellie, also a lab alum) worked on a PGRP-funded postdoc (ECA-PGR: Dissecting Natural Mechanisms for Genome Content Variation and the Impact on Phenotypic Variation; PI: Hirsch, Co-PI: Yandeau-Nelson, McGaugh) to examine the role of copy-number and presence-absence gene content variation on maize phenotypes. Tom completed his PhD with Peter Morrell (University of Minnesota) examining deleterious variation. Tom moved to the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute at the University of Minnesota as a data analyst.

Minnesota Supercomputing Institute-RIS consultant, Adam Herman

Adam finished his postdoc with Yaniv Brandvain examining hybridization in sunflowers and somehow got roped into being first author on a cavefish paper.  Adam is now at the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute as a data analyst.

Postdoc, Courtney Passow (co-advised with Peter Tiffin)

Courtney constructed coexpression networks during cavefish development to better understand sequence and expression contributions to phenotypes. Courtney was awarded the prestigious College of Biological Sciences Grand Challenges Postdoc award. Courtney completed her PhD with Michael Tobler (Kansas State University) examining gene expression in extreme environments. Courtney now works as an R&D Manager at BD. 

Postdoc, Patrick Monnahan (co-advised with Candice Hirsch and Yaniv Brandvain)

Patrick worked on a PGRP-funded postdoc (ECA-PGR: Dissecting Natural Mechanisms for Genome Content Variation and the Impact on Phenotypic Variation; PI: Hirsch, Co-PI: Yandeau-Nelson, McGaugh) to examine the role of copy-number and presence-absence gene content variation on maize phenotypes. Patrick is now a Senior Computational Biologist at Adaptive Biotechnologies Corp.

Postdoc, Jeff Miller

Jeff worked on an NIH-funded project (R01: Understanding complex trait architecture through population genomics; PI: McGaugh, Co-PIs: Alex Keene,Nick Rohner) to use classic quantitative genetic mapping and population genomic data to detect the genetic underpinnings of cavefish sleep loss. 

Undergraduate, Erin Gilbertson

Erin created a QTL database for us for all mapped cavefish QTLs during 2015-2016. During 2016-2017, she worked on a project on gene loss in amniotes and this was recently submitted. Erin also ran behavioral trials for newly-evolved cavefish populations.  Erin started (Fall 2019) graduate school at UCSF, and is now a Postdoctoral Researcher at Yale in the Department of Genetics.

Undergraduate, Josh Gallop

Josh found premature stop codons in the cavefish sequences compared to surface fish. His paper is almost ready to be submitted!  Josh accepted a full-ride scholarship to medical school at the Cleveland Clinic! 

Undergraduate, Jenny Roberts 

Jenny helped analyze cavefish behavioral videos as part of a directed research project!

Post-Bac student, Natalie Alteri

Natalie helped with the cavefish care and research after graduating with a chemistry degree in December 2019. She started medical school in summer 2020!

Undergraduate, Caden LeVahn

Caden joined the McGaugh lab from University of Minnesota's Life Sciences Summer Undergraduate Research Program (LSSURP), and they are interested in animal behavior and evolution. They are finishing up the biology transfer pathway at North Hennepin before transferring to the U of M.