Principal Investigator

Kai Zhu, PhD

Dr. Kai Zhu is an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan, where he holds joint appointments in the School for Environment and Sustainability, the Institute for Global Change Biology, and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. In addition, Dr. Zhu is a Faculty Affiliate with the Michigan Institute for Data and AI in Society, the Michigan Institute for Computational Discovery and Engineering, and the Erb Institute. Dr. Zhu’s research interests revolve around global change biology, ecological modeling, and environmental data science. He brings together his expertise in ecology, statistics, and computer science to advance the understanding of how plants and soils respond to environmental changes. His research spans a wide range of scales, from local experiments to global analyses. Dr. Zhu has been recognized for his contributions to the field, having received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, been elected as an Ecological Society of America Early Career Fellow, and won the New Phytologist Tansley Medal. Dr. Zhu completed his postdoctoral fellowship in global ecology at Stanford University, and earned his PhD degree in ecology and master’s degree in statistics from Duke University.

CV: link
Google Scholar: link
New Phytologist profile: link
Email: zhukai at umich dot edu

Kai Zhu | Zhu Lab UC Santa Cruz

Postdoctoral Fellows

Kara Dobson, PhD

Dr. Kara Dobson is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute for Global Change Biology in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, co-advised by Drs. Kai Zhu and Peter Reich. Kara is interested in understanding how climate change stressors, such as warming or drought, affect plant traits, plant community composition, and species distributions. Kara received her PhD from Michigan State University, where she used a mix of field, lab, and data-focused techniques to understand climate change effects on plant traits and community properties.

Website: link
Email: kcdobson at umich dot edu

 

William Weaver, PhD

Dr. William Weaver is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Michigan Institute for Data and AI in Society (MIDAS), supported by the Eric and Wendy Schmidt AI in Science Postdoctoral Fellowship, co-advised by Drs. Selena Smith and Kai Zhu. William’s research sits at the intersection of ecology, evolutionary biology, and artificial intelligence, focusing on developing innovative machine learning approaches for natural history collections and biodiversity research. His work spans computer vision applications for herbarium specimen analysis, automated transcription systems using large language models, and trait extraction methodologies that accelerate ecological research at scale. William earned his PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Michigan and holds a BA in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies from the University of Colorado Boulder.

Website: link
Email: willwe at umich dot edu

Fan Wu, PhD

Dr. Fan Wu is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, working with Dr. Kai Zhu. Fan is interested in how terrestrial ecosystems respond to and influence weather and climate. Her current research focuses on understanding the role of vegetation dynamics in flash drought development and improving flash drought prediction through process-based modeling. Fan received her PhD in Meteorology and Atmospheric Science from Pennsylvania State University, where she used field observations, remote sensing data assimilation, and numerical weather models to investigate interactions between surface energy exchange and atmospheric boundary layer development.

Website: link
Email: fanatmo at umich dot edu

Xinyi Yan, PhD

Dr. Xinyi Yan is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, co-advised by Drs. Kai Zhu and Jennifer Blesh (Kellogg Biological Station, Michigan State University). Xinyi is interested in how interactions between plants and soil microbes mediate nutrient cycling, and the consequences for plant community composition and productivity under global change. Xinyi received her Ph.D in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior from the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied soil microbial mediation of plant coexistence and the diversity-productivity relationship, utilizing diverse methods including meta-analysis, mathematical models, and field and greenhouse experiments.

Google Scholar: link
Website: link
Email: xinyiyan at umich dot edu

Hyun Seok Yoon, PhD

Dr. Hyun Seok Yoon is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute for Global Change Biology in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, working with Drs. Kai Zhu, Neil Carter, and Thiago Gonçalves-Souza. Hyun is interested in conservation decision science, ecological modeling, and artificial intelligence, with a focus on developing quantitative tools to guide biodiversity conservation under global change. His research uses reinforcement learning, optimization, and risk-sensitive portfolio approaches to study how conservation investments can be dynamically allocated across space and time while accounting for ecological and economic uncertainty. He received his PhD in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Tennessee. Outside of academia, Hyun enjoys rock climbing, camping, and playing piano.

Website: link
Email: hyuny at umich dot edu

Yingtong Zhang, PhD

Dr. Yingtong Zhang is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, co-advised by Drs. Kai Zhu and Ben Goldstein. Yingtong is interested in examining how disturbances shape vegetation dynamics, ecosystem resilience, and the carbon cycle under a changing climate, combining disturbance ecology with large-scale landscape analysis and multi-sensor Earth observation data. She received her Ph.D. from Boston University in 2024. Her previous work has focused on mapping global land cover change and characterizing the spatial and temporal patterns of disturbance across terrestrial ecosystems using satellite remote sensing and long-term time series analysis.

Google Scholar: link
LinkedIn: link
Email: yingtong at umich dot edu

Yue Zhang, PhD

Dr. Yue Zhang is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School for Environment and Sustainability, co-advised by Drs. 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 how ecosystems respond to climate change and to inform strategies for maintaining desirable ecosystem states and supporting 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.

Google Scholar: link
Email: yzearth at umich dot edu

PhD Students

Tim Muhich

Mr. Tim Muhich is a PhD Student in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, co-advised by Drs. Michaela Zint and Kai Zhu. He graduated from Michigan State University in 2012 with a BS in Biological Sciences, minoring in Chemistry, and a BS in Zoology with a concentration in Marine Biology before teaching high school chemistry and climate change for a decade. Tim’s research interests revolve around how to increase access to high-quality climate change educational experiences for high school students. Tim is currently working on projects related to phenology and climate education for biology students, as well as how to implement interdisciplinary climate education programs at the high school level.

Website: link
Email: tmuhich at umich dot edu

Shike Zhang

Mr. Shike Zhang is a PhD Student in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. Shike is interested in climate change and wildfire dynamics in the western US. He aims to expand his knowledge of ecology and advanced statistical methods to develop numerical models and simulations that can assess the feedback of human activities on the ecosystem and ease its burden. Shike completed his undergraduate studies in 2022, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Environmental Science from Tongji University.

Website: link
Email: zhangsk at umich dot edu

Jiali Zhu

Ms. Jiali Zhu is a PhD Student in the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. Jiali earned a BS in Environmental Engineering from Beijing Normal University in 2020 and is set to graduate from the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in June 2023 with an MS in Ecology. Her research interests lie in the dynamic interplay between urban plant phenology, climate change, and human activities. Currently, her research focuses on understanding how human-induced changes impact the local climate system within cities and identifying potential mitigation strategies to reduce climate risks. Outside of academia, Jiali is an avid sports enthusiast, with a particular talent in swimming and a newfound passion for snowboarding.

CV: link
Email: jializ at umich dot edu

Master’s Students

  • Neal Harbaugh, Environment and Sustainability, forest landscape modeling
  • Ruttanaporn Nuangla, Environment and Sustainability, remote sensing for forest disturbance

Undergraduate Students

  • Jia Xi, Statistics and Geospatial Sciences, deep learning and geospatial analysis in monitoring biodiversity and climate change

Former Members

Postdoctoral Fellows

  • Shengxi Gui, 2024-2026, remote sensing of wildfire and vegetation
  • Lan Liu, 2018, plant-microbe interaction in soil ecosystems
  • Wenqi Luo, 2023-2025, soil fungi biogeography and global change
  • Yiluan Song, 2023-2025, biodiversity and climate change
  • Cong Wang, 2017-2018, remote sensing and plant phenology
  • Yuhao Zhao, 2025-2026, community ecology of ants
  • Hengxing Zou, 2024-2026, species interactions under global change

PhD Students

  • Clara Qin, 2018-2022, macroecology of soil microbiota
  • Yiluan Song, 2018-2023, climate change and plant phenology

Master’s Students

  • Xiuyu Cao, 2023-2025, remote sensing vegetation biomass
  • Ross Davison, 2019-2020, mapping coastal ecosystem
  • Diana Gerardo, 2019, velocity of climate and phenology change
  • Jiayuan Jiang, 2026, forest inventory data
  • Kaixin Liu, 2019, ecological and environmental database
  • Yi Liu, 2023-2025, temperature sensitivity of tree flowering phenology
  • Jessica Pan, 2022, phenology education website
  • Xu Qiang, 2024-2026, species distribution modeling
  • Mary Silva, 2019, Gaussian process modeling of phenology change
  • Chuangbo Tong, 2022, natural language processing of phenology-related tweets
  • Ruoyu Wu, 2022-2024, fungal spore phenology

Undergraduate Students

Visiting Graduate Students and Scholars

  • Carolina Arguiano, 2024, forest mycorrhizal modeling, National University of La Plata, Argentina
  • Shijing Liang, 2023, climate and vegetation dynamics, Southern University of Science and Technology, China
  • Pengcheng Liu, 2023-2024, forest biodiversity and biogeography, East China Normal University, China