WHO WE ARE
Principal Investigator
Dr. Elizabeth La Rue
Liz (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Biological Sciences at UTEP (ealarue@utep.edu). She earned her PhD at Purdue University in 2017. Her current focus is on species distributions and ecosystem structure -function relationships in plant communities and wildlife habitat.
Students
Anna Downing
Anna (she/her) is a PhD candidate in the EEB Program. She uses UAVs and remote sensing to study the structural features of wildlife habitat across the desert southwest, including post-wildfire restoration monitoring at Lincoln National Forest.
Bindu Poudel
Bindu is a candidate in the Biology Masters Program. She is studying spatial scaling of dryland structural diversity patterns.
Eli Nyawunu
Eli is in the DEERS Geological Sciences PhD Program and is a CIElOG Fellow. He is focused on using drones and machine learning to monitor rangeland and agricultural plant communities. Eli is co-advised with Deana Pennington.
Joshua Mead
Josh is a candidate in the EEB PhD Program and works on the spatial and thermal ecology of rattle snakes in the Chihuahuan Desert. Josh is in the lab of UTEP herpetologist Jerry Johnson and is co-advised in our lab.
Angie Gutierrez
Angie is a 2025 ROADS Postbac and will be studying the remote sensing of dryland plant communities.
Lab Alumni
Kylie Rezendes (MSc in Biological Sciences, May 2025) described the spatiotemporal co-occurrence of felines in the Northern Jaguar Reserve.
Priscilla Castaneda (ROADS Postbac 2024-2025) worked on drylands soil ecology. She will be starting as a masters student at the University of New Mexico in fall 2025.