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. She earned her Ph.D. from Arizona State University in 2015. Her research combines nonlinear dynamics, spatial ecology, and applied mathematics to uncover general principles governing the emergence of spatial patterns and their consequences for ecosystem resilience and evolutionary dynamics.

Email: xldong@ucdavis.edu   •   Office: 3146 Wickson Hall

Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Researchers

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: kpchoudhary@ucdavis.edu

Stanley Dai

Graduate Student

Stanley joined the Graduate Group in Ecology after earning his M.S. in Statistics from UC Davis. His research interests span eco-evolutionary dynamics, spatial statistics, and spatial modeling, with an emphasis on developing quantitative approaches to address environmental challenges.

Email: shdai@ucdavis.edu

Gavin Pandya

Postdoctoral Researcher

Gavin recently joined the lab after completing his PhD in the math department at UC Davis. He is currently developing mathematical models for stromatolite morphogenesis. Outside the lab, you can find Gavin listening to Chopin or turning over the nearest rock to look for critters.

Email: gpandya@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

Alumni

  • Daniel Kozar – Ph.D. (2019–2024). Dissertation: Self-organization in Biological Soil Crusts: A Source of Resilience in Dryland Mosaics. Now postdoctoral researcher at University of Graz, Austria.
  • Junna Wang – Ph.D. (2019–2023). Dissertation: Stability of Freshwater Ecosystems: Patterns and Mechanisms. Now Associate Professor at Beijing Normal University, China.
  • Linhao Xu – Postdoctoral scholar (2025–2026), contributed to the dryland vegetation pattern formation project.
  • Brunno F. Oliveira – Postdoctoral scholar (2020–2021), contributed to the biodiversity project. Now Postdoctoral Fellow at CESAB – FRB, France.
  • Undergraduate Interns: Joaquin Benitez (2025), Junna Faessel (2022–2023), Paul Linderman (2023–2024), Benjamin Mineau (2024–2025), Zoey Moffitt (2024), Jocelyn Rodriguez (2021), Rocio Venegas (2021), Sara Weitzel (2023–2024), Ziqi Yang (2024).