RUBENSTEIN LAB

integrative organismal biology in a changing world

LAB  NEWS

lab highlights

recent lab news

2023

Shailee Shah’s research on superb starlings was featured in Columbia Magazine.  (9/23) 

Former lab undergraduate student Lea Pollack CC ’12  won the Warder Clyde Allee Award at the 2023 Animal Behavior Society meetings.  (7/23)

Shailee Shah’s research on superb starlings was featured in Columbia News.  (5/23) 

Patrick Kennedy was appointed as a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at the University of Bristol beginning in January 2024.  (5/23)

Shailee Shah was awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology.  (3/23)

past lab news

2022

Irene Garcia Ruiz was awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation Early Postdoc.Mobility Fellowship to join that lab as a Postdoctoral Fellow.  (12/22)

Jay Falk’s recent hummingbird work was featured in Nature.  (10/22)

Shailee Shah won the Warder Clyde Allee Award at the 2022 Animal Behavior Society meetings.  (7/22)

Patrick Kennedy was presented with the Mary Jane West-Eberhard Award from the International Union for the Study of Social Insects.  (7/22)

Alexis Earl was awarded a Graduate Student Travel Award to attend the 2022 Animal Behavior Society meetings.  (6/22)

Rubenstein Lab members moving on to top graduate programs: Jerry Guan MA ’22 (Harvard, PhD).  (3/22)

Jay Falk was awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology.  (3/22)

Shailee Shah was awarded a Smithsonian Institution Postdoctoral Fellowship.  (3/22)

Shailee Shah’s research on superb starlings was featured in Columbia News.  (3/22) 

Stefanie Siller was awarded a Frontiers of Science Fellowship to teach and do postdoctoral work as a Lecturer at Columbia.  (2/22)

Jay Falk’s work on hummingbirds was featured in Columbia Magazine.  (1/22)

Dustin Rubenstein was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  (1/22)

2021

Yiru Cheng was awarded an Education Outreach Grant from the Animal Behavior Society.  (6/21)

Alexis Earl was awarded a Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research.  (5/21)

Catherine Lan was admitted to the Advanced MD Program at Poznań University of Medical Sciences.  (4/21)

Alexis Earl was awarded a grant from the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology to study African starlings.  (2/21)

Stefanie Siller was named a GSAS Teaching Scholar and will be developing a new undergraduate class on Hormones and Behavior for ’21-22.  (2/21)

Nature Communications featured two of  Dustin Rubenstein’s recent papers as an Editor’s Highlight in Ecology and Evolution.  (2/21)

2020

Patrick Kennedy won the Thomas Henry Huxley Award & Marsh Prize from the London Zoological Society for the best thesis in the UK.  (10/20)

Shailee Shah and Jay Falk won Honorable Mention Awards for the best student talk at the 2020 North American Ornithological Congress.  (8/20)

Stefanie Siller was named a Teaching Assessment Fellow by Columbia’s Center for Teaching and Learning for 2020-2021.  (8/20)

Renata Mazzei received a grant from the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University to study cichlids in the Brazilian Amazon.  (5/20)

Shano Caro was awarded a Stengl-Wyer Postdoctoral Scholar Award from the University of Texas at Austin.  (5/20)

Debbie Leung received the Sid Aconsky Scholarship and the Marine Conservation Scholarship to study gobies in Belize.  (4/20)

Patrick Kennedy won the John C Marsden Medal from the Linnean Society for the best doctoral thesis in biology.  (4/20)

Renata Mazzei received a grant from the Huyck Preserve Research Station to study fish social behavior.  (3/20)

Patrick Kennedy was awarded both a Marie Curie and a Simons Society Fellowship to study climate and  social evolution in African wasps.  (2/20)

Renata Mazzei received a grant from the Fish Society of the British Isles for her research on gobies in Belize.  (2/20)

A paper led by Dustin Rubenstein from a working group at Columbia was selected as 2019’s Best Review in TREE.  (1/20)

High school student Zhaleh Mahootian was admitted early decision to Princeton University.  (1/20)

Zhaleh Mahootian was named one of the top 300 high school scholars nationally in the Regeneron Science Talent Search.  (1/20)

2019

Solomon Chak accepted a position as an Assistant Professor at SUNY Old Westbury.  (6/19)

Shailee Shah received a Graduate Student Travel Award to attend this year's Animal Behavior Society meetings.  (6/19)

Shailee Shah was awarded a Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research.  (6/19)

Renata Mazzei received an Early Postdoc.Mobility Fellow funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation to study social evolution in gobies in the Rubenstein Lab.  (6/19)

Shailee Shah received a Van Tyne Research Award from the American Ornithological Society.  (4/19)

Stefanie Siller was named a Lead Teaching Fellow by Columbia’s Center for Teaching and Learning for 2019-2020.  (4/19)

Shailee Shah was awarded a Chapman Grant from the American Museum of Natural History.  (3/19)

Shailee Shah’s research was featured in a film by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology: A Day in the Life of a Field Researcher.  (3/19)

Shailee Shah received a travel award from the American Ornithological Society to present at the 2019 meetings.  (3/19)

Stefanie Siller and Shailee Shah were awarded an Education Outreach Grant from the Animal Behavior Society to write and illustrate a children’s book on superb starlings for the Northern Kenya Conservation Clubs.  (2/19) 

Stefanie Siller and Shailee Shah were also awarded an Outreach Grant from the Society for the Study of Evolution for their book.  (2/19) 

Rafael Maia accepted a position as a Senior Data Scientist at Instacart.  (1/19)

2018

Shana Caro won the Thomas Henry Huxley Award & Marsh Prize from the London Zoological Society for the best thesis in the UK.  (4/18)

Dustin Rubenstein was elected as a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society.  (8/18)

Stefanie Siller received a Van Tyne Research Award from the American Ornithological Society.  (4/18)

Jay Falk won an American Society of Naturalists Student Research Award.(4/18)

High school student Myron Huang won first prize in Animal Sciences at the New York City Science and Engineering Fair.  (3/18)

Jay Falk was awarded a Smithsonian Predoctoral Fellowship.(2/18)

Becca Marcus was named one of the top 300 high school scholars nationally in the Regeneron Science Talent Search.  (1/18)

2017

Shailee Shah received a Travel Grant to present her work at the 2017 American Ornithology Society Meetings.  (8/17)

Katherine Brooks accepted a job as a Collection Analysis Librarian at Columbia University.  (6/17)

High school student Becca Marcus won an Acorda Scientific Excellence Award.  (6/17)

Congratulations to all of the new Rubenstein Lab graduates: Dr. Sarah Guindre-Parker, PhD and newly minted MAs Eleanor Diamant, Yuki Haba, and Alyxandra Pikus.  (5/17)

Stephen Harris accepted an Assistant Professor position at SUNY Purchase.  (5/17)

The Rubenstein Lab was featured in Columbia College Today.  (4/17)

Sarah Guindre-Parker was awarded a graduate student travel grant to present at the Animal Behavior Society Meetings.  (4/17)

High school student Becca Marcus won 4th place for her presentation at the Westchester Science and Engineering Fair.  (3/17)

Behind the Paper: a behind the scenes look at our latest work on shrimp social evolution.  (3/17)

Rubenstein Lab members moving on to top graduate programs: Eleanor Diamant MA ’17 (UCLA, PhD), Yuki Haba MA ’17 (Princeton University, PhD), Lucia Weinman CC ’14 (Rutgers University, PhD), Hannah Skolnik CC ’15 (UC Davis, DVM), and Maddy Cohen CC ’13 (University of Miami, MD).  (3/17)

Sarah Guindre-Parker was awarded a NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship to do research on squirrels at the University of Guelph.  (3/17)

Behind the Paper: a behind the scenes look at our latest work on avian social evolution.  (2/17)

2016

Yuki Haba was awarded a Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research.  (12/16)

Shana Caro received a Simons Foundation Junior Society Fellowship to join the lab to study parental care in starlings.  (12/16)

Katherine Brooks won a poster award at the 2016 Columbia Postdoc Symposium.  (10/16)

Eleanor Diamant was awarded a research grant from the Wilson Ornithological Society.  (6/16)

Postbac students Stefanie Siller and Sarah Khalil both received NSF Graduate Research Fellowships, and MA student Eleanor Diamant received an honorable mention. Former undergraduate student Lea Pollack CC ’12 also received the award.  (3/16)

Yuki Haba received a travel grant from the Columbia Earth Institute to study burying beetles in Japan this summer.  (3/16)

Solomon Chak received a Fellowship from the Life Sciences Research Foundation to do a postdoc at Columbia.  (3/16)

Sarah Guindre-Parker was awarded a travel grant from the International Society for Behavioral Ecology to attend the 2016 annual meetings in Exeter, UK.  (4/16)

In an article about study abroad programs at Columbia, the Columbia Daily Spectator highlighted the Program in Tropical Biology and Sustainability in Kenya.  (1/16)

Sarah Guindre-Parker was awarded the Lynn Riddiford Best Student Poster Award from the Division of Comparative Endocrinology at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology annual meetings.  (1/16)

2015

Sarah Guindre-Parker was awarded a Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research to complete a collaborative project on avian malaria.  (12/15)

Jay Falk was awarded a Smithsonian Institution Short-term Fellowship and designated an Ernst Mayer Fellow.(11/15)

Rubenstein Lab research on superb starlings and grey-capped social weavers was highlighted in the new PBS documentary Animal Homes.  (4/15)

Jay Falk was awarded a Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research.  (4/15)

Sarah Guindre-Parker received an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (DDIG) for her work on superb starlings.  (3/15)

Rubenstein Lab members moving on to top PhD programs: Sara Keen MA ’11 (Cornell), Lea Pollack CC ’12 (UC Davis), and Natalie Hofmeister MA ’15 (Cornell).  (3/15)

Stephen Harris received a a Columbia Frontiers of Science Fellowship and will be joining the lab in July.  (3/15)

Rafael Maia received a Simons Foundation Junior Society Fellowship and will be joining the lab in July.  (1/15)

2014

Dustin Rubenstein was interviewed on ESPN Outside the Lines about co-evolution and the defensive shift in baseball.  (6/14)

Dustin Rubenstein was awarded a grant from the National Geographic Society to return to northern Kenya to study starling stress physiology.  (5/14)

Dustin Rubenstein was awarded a grant from the President’s Office at Columbia University to expand the Kenyan study abroad program.  (5/14)

Dustin Rubenstein and Hans Hofmann were awarded an NSF grant to organize a workshop entitled New Frontiers for the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior at the New York Genome Center in August 2014.  (5/14)

Sarah Guindre-Parker and Natalie Hofmeister both received research grants from the American Ornithologists’ Union.  (4/14)

Katherine Brooks was awarded a Columbia Frontiers of Science Fellowship to do postdoctoral work in the lab.  (4/14)

Dustin Rubenstein was promoted to Associate Professor after a successful 5th Year review.  (4/14) 

Lab alumnus Maddy Cohen CC ’13 was featured in 2012-2013 Columbia College Annual Report about her global study abroad experiences while at Columbia.  (2/14)

2013

Lab alumni Julia Pilowsky CC ’12 and Maddy Cohen CC ’13 were featured in Columbia College Today about their study abroad and research experiences.  (12/13)

Sarah Guindre-Parker was awarded an Animal Behavior Society Student Research Grant.  (5/13)

Gillian Carling, a senior at The Bronx High School of Science, was admitted to Columbia’s class of 2017 and will be starting in the fall.  (4/13) 

Hannah Skolnik was admitted to the 2013 Amgen Scholar’s Program as 1 of 250 students from a national pool of more than 6,200 applications.  (4/13)

Kaitlyn Gaynor and Julia Pilowsky won NSF Graduate Research Fellowships to fund their PhD work at UC Berkeley and Tufts, respectively.  (4/13)

Rebecca Kelley received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship honorable mention.  (4/13)

High school student Gillian Carling was named a Finalist at the New York City Science and Engineering Fair for her work on snapping shrimp.  (3/13)

Julia Pilowsky’s undergraduate senior was published in the April edition of Animal Behaviour, where it is featured in the In Focus section.  (3/13)

2012

Dustin Rubenstein’s research trip with Emmett Duffy to Belize was featured in The New York Times’ Scientists at Work Blog.  (7/12)

Dustin Rubenstein co-edited a recent issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.  (7/12)

Lea Pollack was awarded Departmental Honors, the only EB major to receive the award.  (5/12)

Rebecca Kelley was awarded an Animal Behavior Society Student Research Grant.  (4/12)

Rebecca Kelley received an honorable mention for her NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Application.  (4/12)

Sarah Guindre-Parker was awarded a Canadian NSERC Fellowship to fund her PhD work.  (4/12)

Julia Pilowsky received a Charles Turner Travel Award from the Animal Behavior Society to present at the Annual Meetings this summer.  (3/12)

2011

Rebecca Kelley was awarded a Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research.  (12/11)

James Kealey’s work on snapping shrimp was profiled in the STRI News.  (12/11)

Julia Pilowsky’s senior thesis research on song in superb starlings was featured in the Columbia Spectator.  (9/11)

Sara Keen was awarded a Conference Travel Award by the American Ornithologists’ Union to present her thesis work at the Annual Meetings.  (5/11)

James Kealey was awarded a Smithsonian Institution Short-term Fellowship and the STRI Ernst Mayer Fellowship.  (4/11)

James Kealey was awarded a Columbia Institute of Latin American Studies research grant.  (4/11) 

Rubenstein Lab was featured in the Spring 2011 issue of the Columbia Magazine.  (4/11)

Sara Keen received her second honorable mention for her NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Application.  (4/11)

Dustin Rubenstein co-organized a one-day symposium at Columbia on “Sexual selection, social conflict and the female perspective”.  (4/11)

Dustin Rubenstein and colleagues (Jennifer Fewell and Jim Hunt) were awarded a grant from NESCent to organize a working group entitled Large-scale demographic, network and behavioral trait analyses of sociality from 2011 - 2013.  (2/11)  

2010

Dustin Rubenstein and colleagues (Eileen Lacey, Steven Phelps, and Nancy Solomon) were awarded a grant from NESCent to organize a working group entitled Integrative models of vertebrate sociality: evolution, mechanism and emergent properties from 2011 - 2012.  (10/10)           

Dustin Rubenstein was awarded the 2011 Young Investigator Award by the Animal Behavior Society.  (8/10)

Rubenstein Lab is now on Facebook.  (8/10)

Dustin Rubenstein’s research trip to northern Kenya was featured in The New York Times’ Scientists at Work Blog.  (7/10)

Godffrey Manyaas is the proud father of a beautiful new baby girl.  (4/10)

Sara Keen received an honorable mention for her NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Application.  (4/10)

Dustin Rubenstein was awarded the 2010 The Ned K. Johnson Young Investigator Award by the American Ornithologists‘ Union.  (2/10)

James Kealey was awarded a Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of research.  (1/10) 

2009

Sara Keen and James Kealey were both awarded research travels grants from Columbia’s Earth Institute.  (12/09)

Dustin Rubenstein was profiled in Nature and interviewed on the Nature Podcast.  (12/09)

Wilson Nderitu was profiled in Mpala Memos.  (10/09)

Dustin Rubenstein’s 2004 TREE paper was named as a “Fast Moving Front” by Thomson Reuters.  (9/09)

Rubenstein Lab has finally moved to Columbia University and was profiled in The Record.  (8/09)

Melissa Mark was awarded a 3-yr NSF Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to work in the Rubenstein Lab starting in Jan 2010.  (5/09)

2008

Tyler Davis was awarded an Explorers’ Club Grant for his research on sexual conflict in superb starlings.  (6/08)

Wilson Nderitu graduated with his Diploma in Wildlife Management from the Kenya Wildlife Service Training Institute.  (6/08)

Dustin Rubenstein will start as an Assistant Professor of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia University in Fall 2009.  (3/08)

Rebecca Calisi was awarded a Grant-in-Aid of Research from the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology to study starlings in Kenya.  (1/08) 

Rebecca Calisi won the award for Best Student Poster from the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology’s Division of Neuroscience.  (1/08)

RUBENSTEIN LAB

© 2002-2024  |  Dustin R. Rubenstein