Prof. Michal Polak, Principal Investigator
I received my PhD in 1996 from Arizona State University with John Alcock and Therese Markow. Following a post-doc at Syracuse University with William (Tom) Starmer and Larry Wolf, I joined the faculty at UC in 1999. My research program has consistently attracted funding from the NSF since my Syracuse days. From 2009 to 2014 I served as Graduate Director in the department, was elected to the Fellows of the Graduate School at UC in 2013, and chaired the Reappointment, Promotion and Tenure Committee in 2018/19 and the Graduate Admissions Committee in 2022/23. I edited a successful academic textbook, Developmental Instability: Causes and Consequences (2003, Oxford), and recently served as an Editor for the journal Animal Behaviour (Elsevier). Hobbies: fishing and medium-scale garlic production.
Chandrima Das, Graduate Student
I'm a PhD student in the lab, working in the area of nutritional genomics related to parasite resistance. I am extending the lab's previous findings of genetic polymorphisms for ectoparasite resistance in natural populations in new and exciting ways, by testing for an interaction between specific genes and host nutritional history on the expression of parasite resistance. Essentially I am testing the hypothesis of gene-by-environment interaction across a landscape of specifically chosen host metabolic genes. I received my MS degree from the University of Calcutta in 2014, with a specialization in entomology.
Payton Schaefer, Graduate Student
I'm pursuing my Master's research in the area of parasite-mediate sexual selection. My focal species is Drosophila albomicans which co-occurs with ectoparasitic mites in SE Asia. My research is testing the effect of parasitism in male flies on mating success and courtship performance, with an eye on discriminating direct and indirect models of sexual selection for the evolution of female mating preferences. I received my Bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas, where my undergraduate research, conducted with Dr. Jennifer Gleason, focused on courtship song and behavior in different Drosophila species. My work in the Polak lab is allowing me to pursue my interest in animal behavior which I developed as a dual major in Biology and Psychology at KU.
Ashley Webster, Graduate Student
I'm a graduate student in the lab, fascinated with the mechanisms and evolution of resistance traits that host organisms deploy to defend themselves against naturally occurring parasites and pathogens. My research focuses on testing for the involvement of specific stress tolerance genes that may be acting pleiotropically within the genome to affect resistance and associated fitness costs. Over 2021 I was a full-time NSF-funded research associate (RA) in the lab, primarily concerned with identifying genes that mediate the fly-mite interface. I received my bachelor's degree from UC in 2020 in environmental studies.
Dr. Karl Grieshop, former recent Post-Doctoral Fellow
I received my PhD in 2017 from Uppsala University, Sweden, with Profs. Göran Arnqvist and David Berger. From 2018-2022 I was International Postdoctoral Fellow, hosted by the University of Toronto and Stockholm University. I received my BS and MS degrees from the University of Cincinnati, and my MS research was conducted in the Polak lab. My main interests are sexual conflict and the consequences of sex-specific dominance reversal for fitness. As a post-doc at UC I was an NSF-sponsored researcher working jointly with Drs. Polak and Benoit on elucidating genetic mechanisms of life-history trade-offs linked to parasite resistance. In fall 2023 I joined the faculty as Lecturer at University of East Anglia, UK.
Kaitlin Crilow, Undergraduate Alum
I'm a neuroscience major at UC, and have been working in the lab since fall semester 2021. Over summer 2022 I held a summer REU internship along with Regan Phillips who was also a REU trainee. Together we worked on assessing effects of mite parasitism on mating dynamics in Drosophila albomicans, a beautiful species of fruit fly that inhabits forest habitats of SE Asia. Currently I work in the lab conducting maintenance, fly stocks, supporting the overall research mission of the lab, and assuring compliance with our USDA permit.
Madison Closson, Undergraduate Alum
I'm a freshman at the University of Cincinnati and I have passion for understanding how life works. Before UC I attended Fairfield High School, where I was in marching band, captain on academic team and competed on the tennis team. I'm currently training in the Polak Lab in micro-dissection and the identification of male and female reproductive anatomy in flies. My main interest is to examine the effects of ectoparasitism on male & female post-copulatory responses. My training in fly anatomy and physiology will ultimately lead to testing whether females mating with parasitized males receive fewer sperm than females mating with unparasitized males, with an eye on addressing the fascinating and more general question of the role of parasites in host post-copulatory sexual selection.
Cole Richey, Undergraduate Alum
I'm a freshman at UC, majoring in Biology on the pre-med track. I went to high school in Indiana. My interests include running and gymnastics, and I'm on the gymnastics club team at the university. I do like sky diving, too. In my free time I also like to read, and I like a good tv show. My academic interests lie in science. In the lab at the moment, I'm learning how to trim fly wings as part of a protocol we use to measure behavioral resistance to mites. I'm very interested in the concept of pleiotropy, and my favorite thing has been to watch mites approach and parasitize flies in real time.
Sarah Shamray, Undergraduate Alum
I'm a 3rd-year student at the University of Cincinnati, majoring in Biological Sciences. My interests in biology include zoology, ecology, and animal behavior. I've been interested in research for a while, and want to understand the consequences of how organisms, such as hosts and parasites, interact with each other depending on the environments that they experience. In the lab, I'm working with Ashley Webster to better understand why certain species of fly hosts are better suited to shed mites than other species, and which factors may be involved in mediating parasite attachment duration. After my bachelor's degree I am interested in pursuing research with field work.
Harmanpreet Singh, Recent Undergraduate Alum
Hi! My most memorable work in the lab involved measuring parasite resistance in our natural host-parasite systems, and honing my fine motor and microscopy skills, and high-res image analysis of fly eggs. I worked in the lab for 4 years spanning my entire undergraduate career. Over summers 2018/2019, I was funded by the NSF's summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program, which was a very positive and influential experience. I presented my research at the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) congress in 2019 in Providence, RI, and co-authored a paper that is under revision at Evolution. Currently I'm pursuing a career in health care.
Sandy Chan, Recent Undergraduate Alum
I have a great interest in biological research as a result of my work experience during college which also helped refine my leadership and team work skills. I graduated Sycamore High School in 2020, and by virtue of my passion for biology, I decided to pursue a major in biological sciences at UC. I started working in the Polak Lab for academic credit over spring semester 2021, and over summer of the same year I received a NSF-REU fellowship which allowed me to fully immerse myself in behavioral studies. Together with Sahithi Nagisetty, we documented the remarkable female responses to mating with parasitized male D. albomicans. I presented this work jointly with Sahithi at the annual Animal Behavior conference at Indiana University in March 2022, which was my first scientific meeting. I will be a co-author on the resulting paper. I am currently considering competing offers to medical school.
Sahithi Nagisetty, Recent Undergraduate Alum
I worked in the lab during my sophomore and junior years at UC, while pursuing my bachelor's degree. I gained research experience through working on a project with Sandy Chan looking at how rates of infection by sexually transmitted mites affect female post-mating responses. I presented this work at an Animal Behavior conference in Bloomington, Indiana, and at UC's undergraduate research forum. As an undergrad, I also worked to support a migrant refugee community in Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand, and engaged with the Social Action for Women (SAW) organization in Thailand. My goals in the lab were to develop knowledge and skills in animal research, and to leverage this experience to help attain a career in medicine.
Olivia Kelleher, Recent Polak Lab Alum
My focus in the lab was the study of parasite resistance, environmental stress (toxin exposure), and developmental instability (DI). I measured many (many!) flies and counted immeasurable numbers of sex combs with a high-resolution microscopy set up in my apartment during the Covid pandemic. It was meditative work and I enjoyed long walks with my dog, too. I'm a co-author on a paper resulting from this work, which was both memorable and rewarding as it honed my ability to focus on fine-scale work for long periods, pay attention to minute morphological detail, and aided my appreciation for data accuracy! The overarching theme of my work was the causes and consequences of DI for animal fitness outcomes. I held a STEM fellowship in the lab, and over summer 2020 I was awarded a prestigious NSF-REU fellowship.