people
John Benning
Principal Investigator
jbenning@cornell.edu
John received his undergraduate degree in Anthropology from UNC-Chapel Hill, then spent a couple years traveling the country doing field biology before starting his PhD at the University of Minnesota with Dave Moeller. He is an evolutionary ecologist broadly interested in the evolutionary processes that mediate ecological patterns. John just moved to Ithaca from Minneapolis with his wife, Anna, and their children, Theo (5) and Torin (1). When he’s not chasing the kids down the block, John likes to grow plants, play basketball, attempt various DIY projects, and play drums.
Maddie Ore
Postdoctoral Researcher
mjo234@cornell.edu
Bio placeholder — replace with a short biographical sketch in John’s style. Maddie’s work spans Clarkia temporal population genomics, SLiM eco-evolutionary modeling, and Tribolium whole-genome sequence analysis. Joined the lab June 2026.
Joanie Cha
PhD Student (incoming, Fall 2026)
[email TBD]
Bio placeholder — replace with a short biographical sketch in John’s style.
Anna Cohen
Lab Manager
adc227@cornell.edu
Bio placeholder — replace with a short biographical sketch in John’s style. Anna runs the lab’s day-to-day operations and is currently leading E. coli range-expansion pilots and Clarkia seed germination trials.
Ella Mancino
Research Technician (jointly with the Agrawal Lab)
emm359@cornell.edu
Bio placeholder — replace with a short biographical sketch in John’s style. Ella supports wet-lab and field work across the Benning and Agrawal labs. Joined June 2026.
Nia Delardi
Undergraduate Researcher
[email TBD]
Bio placeholder — replace with a short biographical sketch in John’s style. Nia is gaining wet-lab experience on the E. coli projects.
Emma Poplyk
Undergraduate Researcher
[email TBD]
Bio placeholder — replace with a short biographical sketch in John’s style. Emma is gaining wet-lab experience on the E. coli projects.
You?
We are looking for postdocs, graduate students, undergraduate researchers, and collaborators to join the lab!