People

Benjamin Deneu

I study the application of machine learning techniques in macroecology. I am particularly interested in the contribution of deep neural networks (deep-learning) applied to large volumes of biogeographical data. My main research has focused on the use of deep-learning in the context of species distribution modeling, exploring the advantages that these models can bring to the field. My current project involves the development of AI models linking micro and macroclimates to synthesize explanatory variables related to individuals’ thermal stress and thermal refugia.

Zachary Miller

I am an ecologist using mathematical and computational tools to understand how biological diversity is maintained in ecosystems. My research has explored feedbacks between ecological communities and their environments, trade-offs that structure ecological competition, and the role of evolutionary history in shaping species interactions. In the Hull lab, I am investigating the effects of dormancy on marine population and community dynamics.

Liz Brabson

I am broadly interested in roles of ocean circulation and marine biogeochemistry in modulating the global climate system.  Currently my research is focused on the relative roles of ventilation and temperature-dependent remineralization in the North Pacific on the marine carbon cycle during the warm Pliocene.  I am using both geochemical proxies for pH and remineralization, as well as data-model comparisons with earth system model simulations to examine these processes.

Elly Goetz

I am a third year PhD student in the Hull lab studying the biology of benthic foraminifera. My core interests lie in the understudied aspects of foraminiferal life histories. I came into Yale with a background in their life cycles and associated nuclear and genomic dynamics (Goetz et al., 2022), and through my PhD research, I seek to better understand other difficult, unanswered questions about the mechanisms behind poorly understood foraminiferal biology, including dormancy, through microscopy, genetics, and comparative transcriptomics.

Chas Bissell

Immanuel (Chas) Bissell is a rising senior in Pierson College. He is interested in how ecosystems adapt (or don’t) during periods of extreme warmth and how these periods drive large-scale evolutionary trends. In the Hull Lab, his research involves using ichthyoliths, tiny fossilized fish teeth and denticles, to understand how fish responded to the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum, one of Earth’s more recent and sustained hyperthermals.