People

Megan L. Smith, Ph.D.

I am currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Mississippi State University.

I was previously a NSF postdoctoral fellow in Matthew Hahn’s Lab at Indiana University. I received my PhD in Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology from The Ohio State University, where I was a member of the Carstens Lab, in 2020.

I am originally from Mississippi, and I received my Bachelors of Science in Biology and Bachelor’s of Arts in English from the University of Mississippi in 2015.

Ash Silliman

Ashlyn completed her B..S. in Biology from the University of Mississippi in 2024, and joined the lab in August 2024. Her PhD project aims to understand species limits and diversification in Philomycus slugs from the southeastern US using genomic, phenotypic, and ecological data.

Audrey Bales

Audrey completed her B.S. in Biology from Mississippi State University in 2023, and joined the lab as a Master’s student in August 2024. Her Master’s project aims to understand the invasive history of Arion slugs in North America.

Caden Noonan

Caden completed him B.S. in Biology from the University of Mississippi in 2023, and joined the lab in August 2025. His PhD project aims to develop new machine learning methods for studying gene duplication and loss and apply these methods to understand the evolutionary consequences of gene duplication in several empirical systems, including flowering plants of the Genus Penstemon.

Samuel Earnest

Sam completed him B.S. in Conservation Biology from the University of Idaho in 2026, and joined the lab in August 2026. His project will focus on conservation genomics of Penstemon.