About
Jeremy Cohen, PhD
Climate change is the most pressing issue of our time, and I’m driven to improve our understanding of how climate change affects wildlife and ecosystems. My research examines how climate change influences ecological processes and patterns. In my work, I explore how the responses of wildlife to climate change vary across many species, at large continental and global extents, and across spatiotemporal scales. I fuse big ecological and environmental datasets and apply a broad quantitative skill set, including GIS and spatial techniques, machine learning and AI, and phylogenetic and functional analysis. I compliment these skills with high familiarity with the ecology of my study organisms, especially North American birds. I work on a diverse set of ecological questions, asking how climate change influences shifting movement patterns, the timing of seasonal behaviors, and species distributions across spatial and temporal scales. By comparing responses across species that vary in life history and functional traits and phylogeny, I develop trait-based frameworks to better understand how diverse species and systems are responding to climate change. My history of working across broad questions has allowed me to develop collaborations with climatologists, statisticians, disease ecologists, and many others.
Education, Experience, and Personal Life
I received my Bachelor’s degree in biology from Binghamton University in May 2010 and my PhD in biology from the University of South Florida in December 2016. I continued at USF as a postdoctoral researcher from 2017-18, then spent two years as a researcher with the University of Wisconsin and Cornell lab of Ornithology before moving to Yale University in 2021. Before graduate school, I conducted research at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Labs and Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Nevada. I’m also an avid hiker, birder and wildlife photographer, and a big Yankees fan. I have an awesome wife, a great kid named Micah and two charismatic cats named Toulouse and Quentin.