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Beagle Investigations Return with Darwinian Data

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Jennifer Kovacs

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  • Organization
    Agnes Scott College
  • Website
    http://jkovacs.agnesscott.org/
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  • Biography
    I am an Associate Professor in Biology at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA. Before joining the faculty at Agnes Scott in Fall 2020, I worked in Spelman College’s Biology Department as an Assistant and Associate Professor. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have worked at Spelman with such amazing colleagues and students for all those years, however, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to return to my alma mater and rejoin the academic community that set me on my path all those years ago (ASC Class of 2002– Queen of Hearts)

    I am an evolutionary ecologist by training and am broadly interested in insect behavior, microbiomes, and genome evolution. My current project explores the role that bacterial and fungal genes integrated into insect genomes play in their insect hosts’ evolution and the ecology of their insect hosts. This project is funded by an NSF RUI award and supports the research of multiple undergraduate researchers here at Agnes Scott.

    I hold a Ph.D. in Applied Biology from Georgia Tech. After defending my Ph.D., I completed my post-doctoral training at Emory University as an NIH-funded Teaching and Research Fellow through the Institutional Research and Academic Career Development Award (IRACDA) program. I continue to be deeply invested in my undergraduate teaching and students. I have several publications and ongoing projects focused on the scholarship of teaching and learning, with a particular focus on bringing authentic research experiences into the classroom at all women’s and minority-serving institutions.

    During my downtime, I can often be found in the woods chasing after my twin boys while collecting “special” sticks and rocks. I also enjoy poking around in my garden and wild foraging, especially nuts, berries, and mushrooms.