Dr. Vivienne Foroughirad joined the TAMUG Marine Biology Department and EEB program in 2024. Her current research is on the behavioral ecology of cetaceans, focusing on the factors shaping individual behavior and population-level social structures, and how these impact survival and reproduction across the lifespan. Much of her work comes from the long-term Shark Bay Dolphin Project in Australia, where she leverages multi-generational pedigrees of bottlenose dolphins to investigate mechanisms of inheritance of different behavioral phenotypes. She is additionally investigating how such long-lived, slow-reproducing species respond to climate change by examining the impact of marine heatwaves on dolphin behavior and reproduction.
Spotlight: David Bapst
David Bapst, an Assistant Instructional Professor in the Geology & Geophysics department at Texas A&M University, is newly promoted to core faculty membership in the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology program. His research delves into the intersection of phylogenetics and the fossil record, with a particular focus on marine invertebrates and using quantitative paleobiology to uncover macroevolutionary patterns.
David’s passion for paleontology was ignited during his college years when he discovered the power of data analysis in understanding evolution and ecology. “I really enjoyed pulling at the threads of what seems to be a tightly-stitched theory, and using data from the fossil record to answer how evolution works on long time-scales,” he reflects.
David’s favorite aspect of his position, especially in graduate-level EEB elective courses like GEOL 670 and GEOL 651, is fostering analytical thinking in graduate students, and equipping them with statistical and data exploration tools. “The greatest part of my job is teaching others how to think critically about their data and the questions they are trying to answer, and how to pick out methods to move forward,” he says. David appreciates the diverse interests of students who take his courses, from EEB and other affiliated programs, as the diversity of research projects help expose students to explaining their work to very different fields, as well as drawing methodological connections between work even when the questions and data are nothing alike.
Since 2022, David has organized the workshop program for the Open Source for Open Science event run by the EEB program, helping the university community sample the experience of learning R and other languages. Over just the course of a weekend, OSOS organizers and instructors get to see many members of the community develop from not knowing how to program at all, to gaining self-confidence in their own skills. David is also the author of a widely-cited and extensively downloaded R package, paleotree, another way he tries to provide his expertise to the broader community.
Outside academia, David enjoys hiking, board games, roleplaying games, and catching all of the Pokemon.
Spotlight: EEB Faculty Members
Join us in congratulating our outstanding EEB faculty members for their latest accomplishments!
Dean’s Outstanding Achievement Awards in Teaching
Dean’s Outstanding Achievement Award in Faculty Mentoring
American Society of Parasitologists Henry Baldwin Award Medal
National Science Foundation Career Award
EEB Faculty Promotions
New Core Faculty Members
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Dean’s Outstanding Achievement Awards – Teaching:
Dr. Juliana Rangel Posada
Professor, Department of Entomology
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Dean’s Outstanding Achievement Awards – Faculty Mentoring 2023:
Dr. X. Ben Wu
Professor, Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology
American Society of Parasitologists 2023 Henry Baldwin Ward Medal:
Dr. Charles Criscione
Professor, Department of Biology and Associate Dean, Graduate and Professional School
Promoted Faculty 2023:
Dr. Gabe Hamer
Professor, Department of Entomology
Dr. Jessica Light
Professor, Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology
Dr. Juliana Rangel Posada
Professor, Department of Entomology
Dr. Jason West
Professor, Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology
Dr. Josh Perkin,
Associate Professor, Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology
New EEB Core Faculty Members 2023:
Dr. Katy Gonder
Professor and Department Head, Ecology and Conservation Biology
Dr. Chris Butler
Instructional Associate Professor, Department of Biology
National Science Foundation CAREER Award 2022:
Dr. Christina Belanger
Assistant Professor. Department of Geology and Geophysics
Dr. Kira Delmore
Assistant Professor, Department of Biology