Two EEB Presidential Postdoctoral Fellows poised to build bridges to discovery

Two early-career scholars bringing integrative research collaborations across four departments in two colleges, and thoughtful community engagement, will be the next MSU Presidential Postdoctoral Fellows in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior.

Nicole Lussier and Rebecca Nelson will be the 2025-2026 academic year fellows, announced EEB Director Elise Zipkin. This marks the fifth cohort in a successful program that has increased the scale and potential of interdisciplinary life science research at MSU.

“Welcoming our fifth group of presidential postdocs is an outstanding milestone,” Zipkin said. “Every year we are building exciting breadth and depth of collaboration and innovation that brings strength to MSU and the broader community of ecology, evolution and behavior scholars.”

Lussier is completing her PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, where her doctoral work has focused on the reassembly of species interactions and avian communities in northwest Ecuador. She will continue her passions for tropical conservation and restoration at MSU, where she will work with Lars Brudvig in plant biology and Olivia Smith in horticulture to bridge ecological theory with practical restoration strategies to enhance understanding of successional pathways that support tropical forest regeneration and resilience.

 

Her project brings a symmetry to EEB, as Smith was in the first cohort of presidential postdocs in 2021-2022.

Lussier’s community engagement initiative will include organizing a scientific writing series that provides constructive feedback on proposals, manuscripts, and grant applications. She also is interested in expanding a seminar series that highlights the work of scientists from the Global South started by 2023 presidential postdoc Ashish Nerlekar.

Nelson recently completed her PhD in integrative ecology at the University of California–Davis with research interests in how global change affects mutualistic communities across space and time. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Utah State University Ecology Center, where she has continued to research global change ecology. Her proposed research at MSU will explore how global changes affect the conservation of plant-insect interactions in agroecosystems, combining theoretical models, long-term field experiments, bioinformatics, and network ecology. She will work with Kellogg Biological Station researchers Nick Haddad in integrative biology, Christine Sprunger in plant, soil and microbial sciences, and Sarah Evans in integrative biology, and microbiology, genetics, and immunology.

Nelson will engage with the EEB community by developing practical skill-sharing workshops for EEB graduate students that demystify the hidden expectations of graduate school and by designing a seminar course on LGBTQ+ perspectives in ecology and evolutionary biology.

“The innovative and impactful collaborations driving the success of our EEB program continue to advance inquiry and discovery in research related to ecology, evolution, and behavior,” said MSU Interim Provost Thomas Jeitschko. “We are excited to welcome Nicole and Rebecca to MSU’s community of scholars.”

The MSU Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior is funded through a joint effort initiated by the provost, the vice president for research and innovation, the graduate school, the College of Natural Science, the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and the College of Engineering. The fellowship aims to continue building academic excellence within the EEB program through innovative, integrative research and community service.

The fellowship search committee was co-chaired by Emily Josephs and Kevin Liu and included Ingo Braasch, Lars Brudvig, Phoebe Zarnetske, Ashish Nerlekar, and Carol Rosenbaum.

Additional information can be found on the EEB website.