DeRaad Lab - beginning December 2026

Starting this December 2026, I will be opening my research lab as a faculty curator at the American Museum of Natural History, located in New York City. I am looking to sponsor PhD students through the Richard Gilder Graduate School program as soon as the Fall 2026 application cycle (to matriculate Fall 2027). I am also hoping to recruit postdoctoral research scholars to join the lab. My vision for the lab is to use both museum specimens and active field studies to investigate major outstanding questions at the intersection of conservation and evolutionary genomics. If you are interested in joining the lab and think that our research interests are aligned, please reach out so that we can speak about potential opportunities!

Currently, I am a La Kretz Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California Los Angeles, where I am working in the Aguillon Lab. My postdoc research focuses on studying the “end” of the speciation process, specifically the genomic risk factors determining extinction risk in the Island Scrub-jay.

In 2024, I completed my PhD at the University of Kansas, where I worked in the Moyle Lab, located in the KU Natural History Museum. My doctoral research focused on understanding how new species arise using the birds of the Pacific Islands as a natural experimental framework.