People

Kai Zhu, PhD

Associate Professor

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New Phytologist profile

Email: [email protected]

Dr. Kai Zhu is an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan, with appointments in the School for Environment and Sustainability, the Institute for Global Change Biology, and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Working at the intersection of global change biology, ecological modeling, and environmental data science, his research centers on biodiversity and ecosystem change, with a unifying focus on plants and terrestrial ecosystems. He examines how environmental change reshapes species distributions, community composition, and biotic interactions and alters phenology, productivity, and carbon cycling. By integrating ecological theory with experiments, field observations, remote sensing, and statistical and computational methods, his lab advances understanding and prediction of ecological change across scales, from individual sites to the globe. His contributions have been recognized with the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, election as an Ecological Society of America Early Career Fellow, and the New Phytologist Tansley Medal. He earned his PhD in ecology and MS in statistical science from Duke University and completed postdoctoral research in global ecology at Stanford University.

Kara Dobson, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

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Kara Dobson is a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Global Change Biology, co-advised by Kai Zhu and Peter Reich. Her research examines how climate change stressors, including warming and drought, affect plant traits, community composition, and species distributions. Kara earned her PhD from Michigan State University, where she combined field experiments, laboratory analyses, and data-intensive methods to investigate how climate change affects plant traits and community properties.

William Weaver, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

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Will Weaver is a postdoctoral fellow at the Michigan Institute for Data and AI in Society, supported by the Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship and co-advised by Selena Smith and Kai Zhu. Working at the intersection of ecology, evolutionary biology, and artificial intelligence, he develops machine learning approaches for natural history collections and biodiversity research. His work includes computer vision for analyzing herbarium specimens, large language models for automated transcription, and methods for extracting functional traits at scale. Will earned his PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Michigan and his BA in ecology and evolutionary biology and environmental studies from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Fan Wu, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

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Fan Wu is a postdoctoral fellow in the School for Environment and Sustainability, advised by Kai Zhu. Her research examines how terrestrial ecosystems respond to and influence weather and climate. She studies the role of vegetation dynamics in flash drought development and seeks to improve flash drought prediction through process-based modeling. Fan earned her PhD in meteorology and atmospheric science from Pennsylvania State University, where she combined field observations, remote sensing data assimilation, and numerical weather models to investigate interactions between surface energy exchange and atmospheric boundary-layer development.

Xinyi Yan, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

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Xinyi Yan is a postdoctoral fellow in the School for Environment and Sustainability, co-advised by Kai Zhu and Jennifer Blesh (Kellogg Biological Station, Michigan State University). Her research examines how interactions between plants and soil microbes mediate nutrient cycling and influence plant community composition and productivity under global change. Xinyi earned her PhD in ecology, evolution, and behavior from the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied microbial mediation of plant coexistence and biodiversity–productivity relationships using meta-analysis, mathematical modeling, and field and greenhouse experiments.

Hyun Seok Yoon, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

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Hyun Seok Yoon is a postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Global Change Biology, jointly advised by Kai Zhu, Neil Carter, and Thiago Gonçalves-Souza. His research centers on conservation decision science, ecological modeling, and artificial intelligence, with a focus on developing quantitative tools to guide biodiversity conservation under global change. He uses reinforcement learning, optimization, and risk-sensitive portfolio approaches to investigate how conservation investments can be allocated dynamically across space and time while accounting for ecological and economic uncertainty. Hyun earned his PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Tennessee.

Yingtong Zhang, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

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Yingtong Zhang is a postdoctoral fellow in the School for Environment and Sustainability, co-advised by Kai Zhu and Ben Goldstein. Her research examines how disturbances shape vegetation dynamics, ecosystem resilience, and carbon cycling under a changing climate. She combines disturbance ecology, large-scale landscape analysis, and multisensor Earth observations to characterize ecological change across space and time. Yingtong earned her PhD from Boston University, where she mapped global land-cover change and analyzed the spatial and temporal patterns of disturbance across terrestrial ecosystems using satellite remote sensing and long-term time series.

Yue Zhang, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow

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Yue Zhang is a postdoctoral fellow in the School for Environment and Sustainability, co-advised by Inés Ibáñez and Kai Zhu. Her research focuses on monitoring and modeling ecosystem stability using field measurements, satellite observations, statistical methods, and mechanistic models. She seeks to improve understanding of ecosystem responses to climate change and inform strategies to maintain desirable ecosystem states and support recovery from degradation. Yue earned her PhD in earth sciences from The Ohio State University, where she investigated changes in vegetation resilience and interactions between permafrost dynamics and plant water use in Arctic tundra and boreal forests across Alaska and western Canada.

Tim Muhich

PhD Student

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Tim Muhich is a PhD student in the School for Environment and Sustainability, co-advised by Michaela Zint and Kai Zhu. His research examines how to expand access to high-quality climate change education for high school students. He studies phenology and climate education in biology curricula, as well as the implementation of interdisciplinary climate education programs at the secondary-school level. Before beginning his doctoral studies, Tim taught high school chemistry and climate change for a decade. He earned bachelor’s degrees in biological sciences and zoology from Michigan State University.

Shike Zhang

PhD Student

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Shike Zhang is a PhD student in the School for Environment and Sustainability, advised by Kai Zhu. His research examines interactions among climate change, wildfire, and human activities in the western United States. He uses ecological theory, statistical methods, and numerical modeling to investigate how human activities influence ecosystem dynamics and wildfire risk. Shike earned his BS in environmental science from Tongji University.

Jiali Zhu

PhD Student

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Jiali Zhu is a PhD student in the School for Environment and Sustainability, advised by Kai Zhu. Her research examines interactions among urban plant phenology, climate change, and human activities. She studies how human-driven environmental changes affect urban climates and vegetation and explores strategies to reduce associated climate risks. Jiali earned her BS in environmental engineering from Beijing Normal University and her MS in ecology from the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences.