The Supp Lab conducts research in ecological systems, using large datasets and computational tools. Students who have worked in the Supp Lab includes undergraduates from several different majors at Denison University and a remote full-time data analyst.
Principal Investigator, Dr. Sarah Supp
Dr. Sarah Supp conducts interdisciplinary ecological research using data science tools. Her favorite topics take a macroecological approach to understand patterns of biodiversity and animal movement across space and through time. She collaborates with a broad range of ecologists at other institutions, and frequently mentors undergraduates from Data Analytics, Computer Science, and Biology majors as research assistants. In her free time, she likes to go on adventures with her partner and two tiny humans.
Past Data Analyst
Maya Parker-Smith – Project data analyst. Maya has a Master’s degree in Biology from the University of Missouri. She is writing R code, developing data wrangling, visualization, and analysis workflows using long-term ecological data related to our NSF EAGER award (2022-2025) investigating patterns of species incidence and persistence across the grazing and fire disturbances at the Konza Prairie Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) network. Maya is now lab manager for 3 ecology labs in the UNCG Biology department.
Current Undergraduate Researchers
Tram (Nancy) Tran ’26- Data Analytics & Sustainability and Environmental Studies double major. Nancy is an undergraduate research assistant conducting a lit review and collecting species trait data for the EAGER project in Fall 2023. She also is a research assistant for a renewable energy and media implications project in the Environmental Studies Program during the 2023-24. Nancy aspires to investigate the environmental impacts of human activities and corporate decisions on biodiversity.
Biana Qiu ’26 – Biology major. Biana is an undergraduate research assistant conducting a lit review and collecting species trait data for the EAGER project in Fall 2023. She is especially interested in birds and ecology.
Past Undergraduate Researchers
Max Wisnefski ’24 – Data Analytics major with minors in Philosophy and Computer Science. Science fiction enthusiast. Max was an Anderson Summer Research Scholar in 2023 contributing to a multi-institution collaborative NSF project to examine spatial distribution of co-occurrence of 15 bird species known to feed on eastern red cedar, and evaluate their changes across 2008-2023.
Esther Eun Young Lee ’22 – Math major and Data Analytics enthusiast. Esther was an Anderson Summer Research Scholar in 2022 and a Directed Study student for Fall 2022. She worked on the collaborative NSF project to estimate bird migration dates and speed for 15 species known to feed on eastern red cedar, and their changes across 2008-2022 (Summer and Fall 2022). She enjoyed working with ecological data and is trying out new adventures post graduation.
Ava Oberle ’24 – Data Analytics and Biology majors. Ava worked as an undergraduate research assistant on the annotated bibliography and literature review for the NSF project for avian effects on eastern red cedar expansion in Fall 2021 and Spring 2022.
Jessy Jiahui Niu ’22 – Data Analytics major, Anthropology and Sociology concentration. Jessy worked as an undergraduate research assistant on the NSF project for avian effects on eastern red cedar expansion, writing lots of R code to use 13 years of eBird datasets to infer population-level migration patterns (Spring, Summer, and Fall 2020, Fall 2021). She is pursing a Masters in Information Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Her dream job would involve data story-telling for readers outside the technical world.
Kairuo Yan ’22 – Data Analytics major, Biology concentration. Kairuo worked as an undergraduate research assistant on the spatial analysis on the NSF project for avian effects on eastern red cedar expansion in Fall 2021. Since graduating from Denison, she is pursing education in biostatistics and a Masters in Computer Science.
Francis Biagioli ’20 – Biology major. Francis worked on a data aggregation project to collect information on Ohio butterfly species and their traits, as part of a collaboration with the restoration ecology program at The Wilds (Spring 2019). He decided that ecology is pretty cool and is now a Ph.D. student in the DeLong Lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where he is working on incorporating omnivory into predatory-prey interactions to model predator response.
Jonas Nielsen ’20 – Biology major (premed). Jonas worked on data aggregation project to collect information on butterfly species occurrence in Ohio compared to county-level records and those collected by volunteer community scientists at The Wilds (Spring 2019). He is currently working as a medical scribe at the Cleveland Clinic and is applying to attend Medical School.
Kymani Senior ’20 – Computer Science major. Kymani wrote a python script to automate reformatting 14 years of inconsistently formatted community-science time series data collected for a restoration project by partners at The Wilds (Spring 2019).
Join the Supp Lab!
I hope to take on a few Denison University research assistants during the 2025-2026 academic year to contribute to the NSF project on teaching data science in undergraduate biology courses or continued work in the area of biodiversity and species persistence through time. If you would like to conduct research on a different topic in ecology, environmental studies, or related to data analytics, I’d be happy to discuss options with you.
Send me an email or just ask if you are curious!
Sarah R. Supp 