Seven research labs operate within the Department of Applied Environmental Science at CSUMB. Undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students work with their Principal Investigators (P.I.s) in research labs as interns, researchers, and research assistants, contributing to cutting-edge research and gaining valuable experience in their field of interest.

  • The Engagement Lab
    • PI: Dr. Victoria Derr
    • Research Areas: Education, participation, and planning for just sustainability
  • The Fernandez Lab
    • PI: Dr. Daniel Fernandez
    • Research Areas: Statewide fog water collection and spatial, temporal, and chemical analysis of it
  • The CSUMB NASA AMES Research Group
    • Director: Dr. Susan Alexander
    • Research Areas: Ecological and watershed systems with an emphasis on local, regional, and global environmental problems and issues resulting from changing climatic and land-use patterns
  • The Terrestrial Wildlife Ecology Lab
    • PI: Dr. Jennifer Duggan
    • Research Areas: Conservation biology, landscape ecology, animal behavior
  • The Watershed Environments & Ecology (WEE) Lab 
    • PI: Dr. John Olson
    • Research Areas: Aquatic ecology, remote sensing, watershed sciences
  • The Watershed Geology Lab
    • PI: Dr. James "Jimmy" Guilinger
    • Research Areas: Watershed hydrology, process geomorphology, sediment dynamics, terrestrial remote sensing, and geospatial analysis
  • The Watson Lab
    • PI: Dr. Fred Watson
    • Research Areas: Conservation, plant ecology, wildlife ecology, land use, recreation planning, remote sensing, statistics, hydrology

 

Education and Outreach Partnerships

Five research labs operate within the Department of Biology, Agriculture, and Chemistry. Undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students work with their Principal Investigators (PIs) in research labs as interns, researchers, and research assistants, contributing to cutting-edge research and gaining valuable experience in their fields of interest.

  • The Albuquerque Lab
    • PI: Dr. Caetano Albuquerque
    • Research Areas: Plant physiology, crop physiology, water and nutrient use efficiency, applied agronomy
  • The Alter Lab
    • PI: Dr. Liz Alter
    • Research Areas: Molecular ecology and population genomics of aquatic organisms, environmental DNA (eDNA), phylogenetics
  • The Crop Nutrition and Soil Fertility Management Lab
    • PI: Dr. Arun Jani
    • Research Areas: Crop productivity, reducing nutrient, water, carbon, and energy footprints in specialty crop production, soil fertility
  • The Genomics and Bioinformatics Lab
    • PI: Dr. Nathaniel Jue
    • Research Areas: Evolutionary and functional genomics, genetics 
  • The Haffa Lab
    • PI: Dr. Arlene Haffa
    • Research Area: Agricultural biogeochemistry
  • The Plant Pathology Lab
    • PI: Dr. Jose Pablo Dundore-Arias
    • Research Areas: Ecology and management of plant-associated microbes, biocontrol of plant pathogens, agricultural microbes
  • The Sharma Lab (Chemists without Beakers)
    • PI: Dr. Arun Sharma
    • Research Areas: Computing and machine learning
  • The Sreenivasan Lab
    • PI: Dr. Aparna Sreenivasan
    • Research Areas: Cell cycle, molecular biology, genetics, genomics, science communication

 

Five research labs operate within the Department of Marine Science at CSUMB. Undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students work with their Principal Investigators (PIs) in research labs as interns, researchers, and research assistants, contributing to cutting-edge research and gaining valuable experience in their fields of interest.

  • The Coastal Ecology Lab
    • PI: Dr. Alison Haupt
    • Research Areas: Population genetics, land-sea connections, kelp forest and coastal ecology, anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems
  • The Environmental Physiology Lab
    • PI: Dr. Cheryl Logan
    • Research Areas: Marine ecological physiology & genomics, global change biology, ecological forecasting, ocean climate change policy 
  • The Image Analysis Lab
    • PI: Dr. James Lindholm
    • Research Areas: Shelf & slope ecology, image-based approaches to data collection, application of science to policy & management
  • The Jorgensen Ocean Predator Ecology Lab
    • PI: Dr. Salvador Jorgensen
    • Research Areas: Movement, population dynamics, and ecological interactions of ocean predators, how predator density changes (e.g., declines and recoveries), along with emerging climate-driven range shifts are changing species communities and their interactions
  • The Symbiosis Ecology Analytics (SEA) Lab
    • PI: Dr. Lydia Baker
    • Research Areas: Marine and symbiont ecology, microbial genomics, host–microbe interactions and resilience of marine organisms, fish and coral reef microbial dynamics, marine science education/outreach

Education & Outreach Programs