Rosser Lab

People

Dr. Neil Rosser

Assistant Professor, University of Miami
Associate of Entomology, MCZ, Harvard University
I did my undergraduate degree in Ecology at the University of East Anglia, with a year at the Université de la Méditerranée, in Marseille. I then worked at the Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad in Costa Rica, which led me to pursue research in neotropical biodiversity. I did my Masters in Taxonomy and Biodiversity at Imperial College and the Natural History Museum in London, followed by a PhD at University College London with Jim Mallet.

Neil Rosser

Dr. Isla Duporge

Visiting Scholar
Isla Duporge is a zoologist focused on advancing remote sensing methods to better understand animal behaviour, working mainly on migratory species from wildebeest to monarchs. She has been an Associate Research Fellow for the past three years at Princeton University and, prior to that, was at the University of Oxford. Isla is currently a Visiting Scholar at the University of Miami, where we are collaborating to study butterfly migration and movement ecology.

Isla Duporge

Weston Gray

Ph.D Student
Weston graduated from the College of Wooster in 2019 with a B.A. in Biology and History, and having completed a thesis on the population dynamics of melanism in eastern grey squirrels. He then worked as a Research Assistant at the University of Richmond, where he managed an NIH-funded project on rapid adaptation in the invasive African fig fly (Zaprionus indianus). In 2025, Weston joined the University of Miami as a graduate student, where he is interested in studying hybrid zones to understand how anthropogenic change influences speciation.

Weston Gray

Paola Calderón

Ph.D Student
Paola Calderón graduated from the University of Ikiam in 2024 with a degree in Biotechnology Engineering. She completed her undergraduate thesis on the validation of reference genes for gene expression studies in butterflies. She then worked as a research assistant at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, where she managed the project on female remating behavior and sperm precedence in Heliconius numata. During this time, she also gained experience in the application of genome-editing tools, including CRISPR-Cas9. In 2026, Paola joined the University of Miami as a graduate student; her research interests focus on understanding the genetic basis and ecological dynamics of maintained polymorphism.

Paola Calderón

Hao Tang

Ph.D Student
Tang graduated from Fujian Agricultural and Forestry University in 2022 with a B.A. in Plant Protection and subsequently earned an M.Sc. in Ecology from Shaanxi Normal University. During his master’s research, he employed an integrative framework combining geometric morphometrics, museomics, and deep learning to investigate species boundaries in grasshoppers (Sinopodisma spp.). He has conducted fieldwork all over China and described multiple new species. In 2025, Tang joined the University of Miami as a graduate student, where he focuses on systematic entomology and integrative data for species delimitation.

Hao Tang

Sophia Burghoffer

Undergraduate Researcher
Sophia is an undergraduate student majoring in biology at the University of Miami. She is interested in ecology and evolution, and is currently researching the morphometrics of mimicry in Heliconius butterflies from Peru.

Sophia Burghoffer