Congratulations to Maria Stager on being selected for a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Science Foundation! Maria attended Cornell University and worked as a research assistant after college, including stints in Argentina, Australia, and the Galapagos. She obtained her M.S. under the mentoship of Dr. Zac Cheviron at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before completing her Ph.D. in the Cheviron Lab at the University of Montana. Now post-doc in our Department, Maria conducts research that integrates classical approaches in physiology and ecology with recent genomic techniques to seek a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms driving seasonal phenotypic flexibility and environmental adaptation.
Her fellowship from the NSF will support a study on "the genetic basis and fitness consequences of thermogenic flexibility in juncos". Congrats Maria!