Our Team

We are actively recruiting PhD, Postdoc, and Master’s students (see openings here)!

Principal Investigator

Xiaoli Dong

Associate Professor

Xiaoli joined UC Davis in 2018 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University (2015–2018). She obtained her PhD degree ('15) from Arizona State University. Her research takes a comparative, cross-system approach to understanding spatial self-organization in ecosystems: how patterns emerge, their consequences for landscapes and resident organisms, and how they change over time.

Email: xldong@ucdavis.edu

Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Researchers

Maria Fernanda Morales Aleman

Graduate Student

Fern is a Master's student in the Hydrological Sciences Graduate Group and a Fulbright Scholar. Her research focuses on dryland ecosystems under global change, with an emphasis on the implications for groundwater and water resources. Learn more here.

Email: mfmoralesaleman@ucdavis.edu

Kushal Choudhary

Postdoctoral Researcher

Kushal recently joined the lab after completing his Ph.D. at IIT Madras, India, where his dissertation focused on interfacial instability between two fluids. As a postdoctoral researcher, Kushal is currently leading our project investigating the pattern formation of modern stromatolites by benthic microbial communities in Antarctic lakes.

Email: kushalchoudhary432@gmail.com

Stanley Dai

Graduate Student

Stanley is a Master’s student in the Graduate Program in Statistics. His research interests center on spatial statistics and spatial modeling, with a particular focus on applications to environmental challenges.

Email: shdai@ucdavis.edu

Shawna Kelley

Graduate Student

Shawna is a Master's student in the Graduate Group in Ecology. Her research interests lie broadly in biogeochemistry, with a focus on the role of microtopography in vegetation pattern formation in dryland ecosystems.

Email: slkelley@ucdavis.edu

Malavika Venkatesh

Graduate Student

Malavika is a Ph.D. student in the Graduate Group in Ecology. She is broadly interested in collective behaviors and the emergent properties of complex adaptive systems. Malavika is the recipient of the 2025 Dean's Circle Fellowship.

Email: malvenkatesh@ucdavis.edu

Linhao Xu

Postdoctoral Researcher

Linhao joined our lab in 2025 after obtaining her PhD from the University of Miami. Linhao is interested in ecosystem spatial pattern formation, ecosystem resilience, long transient dynamics, and alternative stable states. As a postdoctral fellow, she is currently leading our project investigating vegetation pattern formation in drylands.

Email: lhxu@ucdavis.edu

Alumni