Kerri Crawford, Ph.D. | Associate Professor
Kerri is broadly interested in plants, their interactions with each other and other organisms (including insects and microbes), and the community-level and ecosystem-level consequences of these interactions. She also loves fishing, sports, reading, and eating at all the amazing restaurants in Houston.
Email: kmcrawford3@uh.edu Phone: 1.713.743.8948 Office: SR2 242F Lab: 231
Current Graduate Students
Scott Clark | Ph.D. Candidate
Scott wants to understand the way plant communities develop, respond to exotic invasions, interact with soil microbiota, and adapt to climate change. He has chronicled his experience doing research on sea turtles in the Galapagos Islands at darwinsfootsteps.com and his time backpacking and exploring the natural landscape of Texas at deartexas.com. He graduated with a B.S. in Biology from the University of Houston and has worked as a photographer, writer and multimedia news editor.
Elliot Lagueux | Ph.D. Candidate
Elliot is interested in microbe-microbe interactions and the ways in which soil microbial communities provide services to their ecosystems. He graduated from the University of New Mexico in 2019 with a B. S. in Biology. Elliot’s prior research includes examining the effects of climate change on soil fungal communities and working with fungal cultures from greenhouse experiments. Elliot’s main interests are fungi, soil community assembly, and the lingering effects of land use on ecosystems. For his PhD work, Elliot is focusing on using interaction networks to examine the relationships between soil fungi within their communities and their importance to community function and stability, as well as directly manipulating artificial fungal communities to get at the same questions. When not in the lab, Elliot spends his time playing Dungeons and Dragons and crocheting.
David Ozro Woods | Ph.D. Student
David is interested in plant-microbe interactions, how they are impacted by differing ecosystem processes, and the effects of disturbance on microbial communities. He graduated from the University of Arizona in 2022 with a B.S. in Natural Resources: Conservation Biology with minors in both Marine Science and Plant Science. His prior research focuses include the effects of coastal processes on endophytic fungal communities in macroalgae and terrestrial plants, descriptions of novel species of fungi, the impacts of varying precipitation regimes on rangeland plant communities, and how stakeholder involvement can impact forest planning. When not in the lab, David enjoys the outdoors and cooking.
Current Post-Bacs
Jakob Joachin | NSF REPS
Jakob has worked on basically every project in the lab for the past few years, from plant-herbivore interactions to dune restoration to climate change and plant-microbe interactions. They are currently an NSF REPS fellow investigating how abiotic conditions can shape the specificity of plant-microbe interactions. Jakob earned an NSF GRFP, and they plan to attend grad school this fall.
Current Undergraduate Students
Amber Ooi | Summer REU student
Amber joined the lab as an REU student in the summer of 2021. She worked with Aidan on a project testing whether plants buffer soil microbial communities against drought stress. She has also worked on lots of other projects in the lab related to climate change and plant-microbe interactions.
Aidan Marshall | Summer REU student
Aidan joined the lab as an REU student in the summer of 2021. He is an Environmental Studies major at Florida Southern College who hopes to pursue a career in mycology. He worked with Amber Ooi to investigate the effect of plant presence on soil microbial communities during drought stress. He is interested in fungal biodiversity, systematics, and conservation.
Anique Siddiqui 
Anique is a bioengineering major who joined the lab in March 2021 and has worked on multiple projects with Scott. He is now pursuing his own project with a Provost’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship, exploring the production of allelochemicals by an invasive forb and whether native plants become less susceptible to their influence over time.
Carla Romero
Carla has worked with Scott in the lab since August 2021. She received a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) and will be determining whether the stress gradient hypothesis is relevant to the interaction of an invasive forb with the native plant community. Under the stress gradient hypothesis, plants tend to shift from competition to facilitation under environmental stress.
Kayla 
Zinsmeyer
Kayla has worked in the Crawford Lab with Scott since August 2021. She is working on her own project now, determining whether priority effects that may give an invasive species an advantage in becoming established in an ecosystem wane over time as native species adapt to the invasive plant.
Krystal Nugyen
Krystal has worked with Scott in the lab since August 2021. Another recipient of a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, she is comparing the competitiveness of two varieties of the flowering plant Coreopsis and whether one variant is more successful against an invasive forb.
Sylvana 
Mvoi
Sylvana joined the Crawford Lab in February 2022 and is working with Scott and other undergraduates in the lab on adaptation of invasive species to native plant and soil microbial communities.
Valeria Hohl
Valeria is a biology major who has worked in the Crawford Lab since November 2021 with Scott and other undergraduates on his team. She is one of three people working on independent projects after receiving a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF). Her project considers whether an invasive plant from South America has evolved to become more competitive with native species since arriving on the Gulf Coast more than a century ago.
Matt Mohammadi
Matt joined the team working with Scott in the Crawford Lab in February 2022. He is working on several projects that explore the response of native plant and soil microbial communities to the arrival of an invasive species.
Lab Alumni
Dr. Noah Luecke 
Noah received his B.S. from Cal State Monterey Bay in Biology. He then worked in a Plant Pathology lab at the USDA-ARS. He is interested in understanding the relative importance of multiple plant microbiomes on plant performance. His goal is to understand how shifts in the environment may change the effects and importance of each microbiome. He is using Texas prairies to combine his two passions, science and the great outdoors. Noah is the recipient of the AP Kimball Fellowship award. Noah earned his PhD in 2022 and is currently a postdoc at NC State.
Dr. Hannah Locke 
Hannah graduated with a B.A. in Biological Sciences and Environmental Studies from Goucher College. After spending three years in the classroom learning how to effectively teach science with Teach for America, Hannah returned to research to pursue her interests in plant community ecology. Her work primarily explores how soil symbionts influence plant traits, and mediate plant-insect interactions aboveground, but she is widely interested in mutualisms, multitrophic interactions and phenotypic plasticity. In her free time, she enjoys experimenting with gluten-free recipes and taking long walks with her dog in state parks. Hannah earned her PhD in 2021 and is currently at postdoc at the University of Delaware. (Photo credit to Lyle Hawthorne)
Jan Dudenhoeffer | Postdoc
Jan received his doctoral degree from the University of Freiburg in Germany working on multiple aspects of plant-biota interactions, ranging from pollination to plant-soil feedbacks in the ‘Jena Biodiversity Experiment’. Afterwards he worked at the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Greenwich in the UK, trying to make bumblebees better pollinators using caffeine. Here in Houston and back to his ‘roots’ he worked on how changes in precipitation influence plant-soil feedbacks and how this might change the dynamics of plant community development.
Anna Hawkins | M.S.
Anna completed her master’s degree in Spring 2017. She tested how soil moisture influences interactions between plants and soil microbes in the Texas coastal prairie. Before coming to UH, Anna received her B.S. from the University of Alabama. In addition to science, Anna also enjoys hiking, pokemon, Zelda, baking, and all thing Miyazaki! Anna is currently on the job market in Houston. If anyone is in need of an excellent ecologist and/or top-notch educator, let her know!
Michelle Busch | Lab technician
Michelle joined us in September 2015 after finishing her B.S. at the University of Michigan, spending some time in Uganda, and TA’ing at the University of Michigan’s Biostation. She is highly skilled in all things ecological and kept everything in the lab running smoothly. When she isn’t sciencing (and sometimes when she is sciencing), Michelle likes being scared, Harry Potter, and baking for the lab. Michelle is currently a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma, where she is studying stream ecology. While in the lab, Michelle received a honorable mention for her application to NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program. We wish Michelle all the best!
Heather Slinn | Lab technician
Heather was our lab tech during the summer of 2015. She came to us from the University of British Columbia, where she worked with Greg Crutsinger. She was responsible for getting the lab up and running. We set up an amazing number of experiments while she was here! Now, Heather is a PhD student at the University of Nevada – Reno (soon to be University of Guelph) and is studying tritrophic interactions in the tropics.
Maya Reese | Rotation Student
Maya Reese graduated with a degree in Biology from Tuskegee University. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. here at the University of Houston and her interests are in the behavioral ecology of social insects. While she mostly works with the Western Harvester Ant, Pogonomyrmex occidentalis, Maya joined us for Spring semester in 2016 for a rotation in our lab looking at plant soil feedback with Ammophila. Her main goal for her PhD is to understand how ant behavior affects their fitness. She’s also a lover of all things Pokemon, Marvel, and Star Wars! And if she is not at home watching Netflix you can probably find her at her secondary (and favorite) residence, The Galleria.
Undergraduate Lab Alumni
Alejandra Garcia
Alejandra joined the lab as an intern in the 2019 Urban Experience Program through the Cougar Initiative to Engage internship. She conducted an independent project studying aquatic to terrestrial linkages along the shores of Lake Michigan. She learned that lake-emergent midges can more than double plant growth! She also learned that thousands of dead midges smell really bad. She published a manuscript of her work and is now working in biotechnology.
Abbey Lincke
Abbey joined the lab in May 2018. After helping Hannah with her projects, she decided to conduct independent research. Now, she is testing how soil microbes influence plant community responses to flooding.
Madeline Luong
Madeline joined the lab in December 2017. In the lab, she mostly focus on microbial stuff like taking care of long term cultures and subculturing fungal isolates! She is interested in how fungal endophytes influence germination and plant performance. When she’s not in the lab you can find her hiking, doing photography, and petting other people’s animals. Madeline received a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship to conduct her own research. She is currently finishing her senior thesis and applying to graduate schools.
Antoine Nguyen
Antoine joined the lab in May 2019 to help out with Hannah’s many projects. Some of the things he’s helped out with are weighing plant biomass, counting spores, and catching grasshoppers. He is a junior majoring in Biology and minoring in Medicine and Society. Beyond the lab, he enjoys rooting for Houston sports in its golden era, while playing some of them too.
Olubunmi Oladapo
Olubunmi has been in the lab since 2017. Her first major accomplishment was helping keep the dune restoration project on track. Her newest major accomplishment is setting up independent research testing how soil pH influence the outcome of plant-microbe interactions.
Thomas Pham
I joined the lab in summer of 2018, helping with a project on Solidago with Hannah. I’m really interested in all things plant and hope to continue research with them in the future. I enjoy growing exotic plants like sundews and raising cats in my spare time.
J
acob Roy
Jacob joined the lab in May 2019, mainly working alongside Noah’s projects as an assistant. He helped in spore counting, weighing biomass, spore extractions, and other activities. With aspirations to become a doctor, Jacob plans to attend medical school after graduating as a Biology major.
John Scarborough
John is conducting independent research in the lab. He is testing how water availability influences root niche partitioning in two closely related species of grasses. To conduct this work, he built lots of clear containers — and they look really cool!
Austin Meija
Austin joined the lab in June 2018. He helped Noah with lots of different projects, including a project that tested how native soil amendments and commercially available AM fungi influence a grass commonly used in Texas dune restorations. He’s helping Noah and me write the manuscript now. He is currently in grad school in the Department of Entomology at Penn State. Way to go Austin!
Laura Elizondo
While in the lab, Laura conducted an independent project testing how commercially available soil microbes influence the ability of a common dune grass to withstand salinity. She found that AM fungi increase plant performance under salt stress and that the benefits of symbiosis were still accruing after 12 weeks of growth. She is currently working on the manuscript of her results. After graduating, Laura moved to Cincinnati, where she is working at a biotech company.
Claire Alverson
Claire helped out in the lab in summer 2019. She was responsible for helping us develop new protocols that we will use to examine microbial responses to climate change in our new plant-soil feedback experiment. She was also handy with a soil corer!
Hoang Luu | Post-Bac
Hoang graduated from UH with a B.S. in mathematical biology and joined the lab in September 2016. In his undergraduate career, he studied a little bit of everything in the STEM fields. Currently, Hoang is helping create a plant-soil feedback model. When he isn’t blowing minds with math, Hoang enjoys traveling and investing in stocks. He hopes to change the world in a positive way. Hoang is currently in grad school at Ohio University with Dr. Rebecca Snell.
Huda Khan
Huda joined us in lab in January 2016, and is majoring in Biology in UH’s Honors College. She hopes to someday be a physician. When she isn’t helping us out by isolating and counting spores, Huda enjoys cooking, painting, reading, talking with friends and family, and spending time outdoors. On her weekends, Huda enjoys binge watching shows and catching up on sleep (who doesn’t?!). Huda is currently in medical school.
Sandy Berger
Sandy joined the lab in June. She is a sophomore majoring in environmental science, and would like to work in conservation in the future. Sandy has been a major asset to our spore counting, and enjoys biking, reading, and spending time with friends. She also hopes to spend some time traveling in her lifetime. Sandy is currently serving in Peace Corps.
Carolyn Nielsen| Undergraduate Research Assistant
Carolyn joined our lab in the Spring of 2017 and we have been lucky to have her around! Always eager and willing to help, Carolyn has been essential to leaf counting, data recording, weighing materials, and general lab spirit. She hopes to work on her own project soon, and wants to continue towards a graduate degree in ecology.
Yash Desai | Undergraduate Research Assistant
Yash joined the lab in January 2015. He is enthusiastic about separating roots from sand and extracting hyphae. Yash is also an RA at the University of Houston, and is involved in many organizations other than our lab -and he is an asset to them all! Yash is currently applying for medical school and is looking forward to taking a year off.
Tran Mai | 
Senior Honors Thesis
Tran joined the lab in January 2015. Tran is responsible for keeping Kerri on task, perfecting lab techniques, and making everyone laugh. She is also finishing her senior thesis, which tests how nematodes influence plant community composition. Tran also has been to Haiti for 2 consecutive summers to help give medical aid to villagers in need. Trans is headed to Boston to go to Pharmacy school after a summer of travels!
Joseph Trinh | Undergraduate Research Assistant
Joseph joined the lab to assist Anna with her graduate research in the winter of 2016. He is a junior at UH studying Biology and minoring in Chemistry and Psychology. He is also an officer for the Pre-Optometry Professional Society. When he isn’t helping out by making slides or weighing plant material, Joseph enjoys playing sports, listening and making music, and volunteering to help those in need.
Carlos Perez 
| Undergraduate Research Assistant
Carlos joined the lab in May 2015. He is an expert plant waterer, seed collector, soil sorter, and general lab boss. Carlos is in the teachHOUSTON, which aims increase the number of qualified STEM educators in Houston and across the US. Carlos has been awarded a teaching job in Cypress Independent School Distric, where he hope to inspire students to become more engaged in biology and the sciences.
Carmelo Laurea | Undergraduate Research Assistant
Carmelo is 
majoring in Biology with a minor in Business Administration, aspiring to become a dentist. He volunteers his time at a free clinic to help the under served population of Houston. He is also a foodie and loves venturing out to new restaurants every week. He is a member of the American Student Dental Association and Global Medical Brigades here at UH. Also, basketball is ingrained in his soul, because ball is life. He joined us in the spring of 2016.
Shelby Chriss | Undergraduate Research Assistant
Shelby joined the lab in January 2015. She is an expert at gluing seeds onto toothpicks, helping Kerri move heavy furniture, and organizing the lab. Shelby is also helped on an independent project testing how soil microbes from Lake Michigan sand dunes influence plant growth.
Katie Hauser | Undergraduate Research Assistant 
Katie joined the lab in January 2015. Katie loves kittens and finding Ammophila seeds. Katie graduated in 2016, and is currently working as a dental assistant to a pediatric dentist while she is applying to dental school.
Taylor Hinchliffe | Undergraduate Research Assistant
Taylor joined the lab in January 2015. Taylor is enthusiastic about all things science. Taylor also graduated in 2016, and is currently working in Dr. Danino’s lab in NYC studying design principles of gene circuits while figuring out what his next steps are.
Sean Barnes | Undergraduate Research Assistant 
After spending time working in biomedical and evolutionary biology labs, Sean decided to join our lab in October 2015 to learn more about ecology. While he missed dissecting mice, Sean made do with dissecting flowers. He recently started an internship at MD Anderson in the hopes of going to med school (maybe flowers weren’t good enough after all…).
Bhavya Gurugunti | Undergraduate Research Assistant
While on break from her studies at the University of Texas – Dallas, Bhavya helps out in our lab. Last summer, she set up an independent project testing how soil microbes influence plant succession on Lake Michigan sand dunes. Shelby was her in-house counterpart to finish the project.
Caitlin Watanasiri | Senior Honor’s Thesis
Caitlin conducted her senior thesis research with me while she was an undergrad at Washington University in St. Louis. She tested how invasive garlic mustard influences the community structure of native species in the forest understory. Caitlin is currently on the job market and looking for ecology-related jobs.