Ryan J. Weaver
Principal Investigator
Assistant Professor, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University.
Evolutionary Bioenergetics Lab
People
Meet the students and researchers studying evolutionary bioenergetics at Iowa State University.
People
Current lab members
The Evolutionary Bioenergetics Lab brings together students interested in mitochondrial biology, microbiology, genetics and genomics, pollinator physiology, ecology, and evolution.
Puja Bajracharya
PhD student
Puja is a PhD student in the Microbiology Graduate Program. Puja's project aims to discover the role of AOX) in the tomato fungal pathogen, Fusarium oxysporum , with particular emphasis on hypoxia adaptation, mitochondrial respiration, oxidative stress regulation, and tomato host infection.
IM
Israt Mouri
PhD student
Israt studies alternative oxidase pathways in fungi associated with amphibians and reptiles. Her work asks how AOX contributes to fungal metabolism, stress responses, and host-pathogen interactions in changing environments.
Saumya Balaji
Master’s student
Saumya studies mitochondrial responses of the alfalfa leafcutting bee, Megachile rotundata, to different thermal stressors. Her interest in pollinator physiology began through undergraduate research and an REU project on tissue-specific responses to sublethal cold stress.
Training environment
What students learn here
The lab is built around mechanistic evolutionary biology. Students develop projects that move between organismal biology, physiology, molecular evolution, and ecological context.
- Experimental and comparative approaches to mitochondrial physiology.
- Evolutionary thinking about stress, constraint, adaptation, and genome interaction.
- Project ownership, clear writing, reproducible analysis, and collaborative science.