Dr. Rick Relyea
 
David M. Darrin '40 Senior Endowed Chair in Biological Sciences
Acting Head, Dept. of Earth & Environmental Sciences

Founding Director, The Jefferson Project (2014-2022)
Director, Darrin Fresh Water Institute (2014-2022)
Director, Pymatuning Lab of Ecology (2007-2014)
 

Our research group combines long-term field surveys, experiments, and computer models to investigate topics related to understanding and protecting freshwater ecosystems.  Our areas of interest are wide ranging and include foundational and applied approaches that have major conservation implications:  community ecology, limnology, ecotoxicology, phenotypic plasticity, sexual selection, animal mating systems, forest inputs to wetlands, disease ecology, and invasive species.  We approach this work from multiple disciplines and we work with a diversity of aquatic organisms.
 
The Relyea Lab is also a collaborator in The Jefferson Project, which is a technologically advanced initiative to study freshwater ecosystems. In this work, we have the privilege of working with a wide range of experts in biology, environmental science, engineering, cyber-infrastructure/Internet of Things, physics, meteorology, Big Data, cognitive computing, and the arts.