Lab News

January 2026 The Armstrong Lab attended the International Plant and Animal Genome Conference (PAG) in San Diego, CA.

Elisabeth smiling in front of her poster titled 'Evolutionary dynamics of small population recovery in the island fox"

June 2025 Raya and Elisabeth attended Evolution in Athens, GA. Raya presented a talk and Elisabeth presented a Poster.

May 2025 Ellie, Jazlyn, and Elisabeth presented at the annual island fox meeting

November 2024 Ellie and Elisabeth attended the island fox necropsy workshop at the Santa Barbara Zoo

Jazlyn presenting a talk on island fox genomes
Group of people working at outdoor tables under pop-up tents during a necropsy workshop, with dissection tools and supplies laid out
Raya presenting a talk on CoalMiner, a pipeline she developed for simulating and testing demographic models
Ellie and Elisabeth wearing gloves and safety glasses while performing a necropsy on an island fox specimen

May 2025 Ellie is featured in UCR magazine and gets to take customary awkward skull holding photos. You can read the piece here.

April 2025 Elisabeth was awarded a prestigious NSF GRFP Fellowship to support her graduate work! Max also received an honorable mention. Huge congrats to Elisabeth and Max!

Lab group photo of Maria, Raya, Elisabeth, Ellie, Holland, and Max standing together outdoors

July 2024 Congrats to PhD student Elisabeth Leung for receiving funding from Friends of the Island Fox to study the effect of captive founder bottlenecks on Santa Rosa and San Miguel! We are so proud of Elisabeth and can’t wait for more fox science!

Ellie holding a large animal skull in a natural history collections room, with additional skulls visible on shelves behind her
National Science Foundation and Graduate Research Fellowships Program (GRFP) logos
Close-up portrait of rescue tiger Kenobi resting next to a log
Large grizzly bear walking through tall grass
Island fox sitting in a tree

September 2024 Ellie’s PhD research on captive tigers made the cover of PNAS! You can read more about it here. This research was also featured by Science Magazine and the New York Times.

August 2024 The Armstrong Lab receives a grant in collaboration with the Kelley Lab, USGS, and USFWS collaborators to continue work on brown bears in the Lower 48. You can read more about the award here.