Hello all,
My name is Cheyenne Graham and I am a second year PhD student at the University of Michigan. I completed my master's at Umich in 2023 in which I studied the evolutionary history between howler monkeys and pinworms in Dr. Liliana Cortes-Ortiz' lab. I now am co-advised by Dr. Kelly Speer and Dr. Meghan Duffy. My dissertation research focuses on the association between hybridization, immunology and pathogen infection in small mammals! 🦇
My Story
Younger Cheyenne would be overjoyed to see how far I’ve come! Achieving my dream of conducting research both in the field and the lab has been incredibly fulfilling, and I’m proud to call myself an evolutionary biologist. I am deeply committed to making the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology more inclusive for students of color and other underrepresented groups. Science should be accessible to everyone, and I’m determined to help make that a reality through initiatives like ISMEEB (“I See Me in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology”), the outreach group I co-created to inspire and support underrepresented students.
I’m also excited to implement science escape rooms into school curricula in Michigan and Belize, providing creative ways to teach science and foster curiosity about bats. As a GBatNet student representative, I have the privilege of learning about bats, contributing to their conservation, and designing projects that will inspire and guide the next generation of scientists.
