Gary N. Ervin
Plant Ecology Lab​ ~ Aquatic Botany, Invasive Species, Wetland Ecology​
Department of Biological Sciences, Mississippi State University
Ervin Lab Postdocs
Sumanta Chatterjee
PhD from University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Sumanta Chatterjee is working as a Postdoctoral Associate in my Plant Ecology Lab at Mississippi State University, where he contributes to a project aimed at parameterizing US Army Corps of Engineers ecosystem model- GenVeg (Next Generation Vegetation model) to advance understanding of soil-plant interactions in Gulf Coast wetlands. He earned his Ph.D. in Soil Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where his research focused on water-carbon coupling, soil health, remote sensing, AI/ML, land-atmosphere interactions, climate extremes, and causal modeling.
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Sumanta has held postdoctoral appointments at the USDA Hydrology and Remote Sensing Laboratory, Beltsville in Maryland, where he applied the ALEXI/disALEXI land surface models to monitor agricultural water use, and at the University of Maryland, where he helped develop the Cover Crop Nitrogen Calculator (CCNCALC) and led cover crop biomass modeling efforts using remote sensing and machine learning approaches. Earlier in his career, he worked with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research as an ARS Scientist, where he studied wetland rice (Oryza sativa) ecology, greenhouse gas emissions, soil health, eddy covariance, land-use/land-cover dynamics, and ecosystem services. His interdisciplinary research integrates soil physics, hydrology, ecology, and data science, with the overarching goal of linking soil, plant, and atmospheric processes to inform sustainable agriculture, ecosystem resilience, and climate adaptation strategies.
Tatiana Lobato de Magalhães
PhD from Autonomous University of Querétaro, Mexico
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Tatiana was a postdoc in my lab during 2024-2025. She worked with us on a project aimed at parameterizing US Army Corps of Engineers ecosystem models, specifically general vegetation models for floodplain wetlands.
Tatiana is internationally recognized for her work with aquatic plants and with the international chapter of the Society of Wetland Scientists. You can read more about Tatiana's work on her website at: https://lobatomagalhaes.weebly.com/
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Travis Marsico
PhD from Notre Dame
Travis worked in the Ervin Lab during 2008-2009. He managed a collaborative research project among my lab and three other labs in the MSU Biology Department, focusing on phylogeography and evolutionary ecology in the prickly pear - cactus moth plant-herbivore system. Notable accomplishments from that work were a native-invasive range genetic analysis of the invasive South American cactus moth and experimental work investigating dynamics among the cacti and both their native and invasive herbivores.
As of 2025, Travis served as Vice Provost for Research, Innovation, and Discovery and Executive Director of the Arkansas Biosciences Institute at Arkansas State University. He also is Professor of Botany at Arkansas State University (A-State) where he researches biogeography, biodiversity conservation, community ecology, natural history, and species invasions. His research includes such topics as: risk associated with hitchhiking plant propagules at US shipping ports, invasion of herbivorous insect pests, plant diversity patterns in fragmented landscapes of the Mississippi River Alluvial Plain, and plant diversity patterns along elevation gradients in the Neotropics. He also curates the herbarium (STAR) and manages the Laboratory Sciences Greenhouse.
Rachel Jolly
PhD from Auburn University
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Rachel worked at MSU from 2008-2010. She coordinated research and outreach activities on an EPA grant to study ecological and cultural roles of native river cane (Arundinaria gigantea) in natural and human communities of the Pearl River watershed. Rachel worked in both the Biology Department and the Plant & Soil Sciences Department at MSU, splitting time between my lab and that of my collaborator, Brian Baldwin. One of her major accomplishments on that project was the organization of a regional rivercane symposium in cooperation with the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.
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Rachel currently (2024) is on the faculty at University of Guam. She previously worked as a tropical ecologist on the island of Guam. She is interested in endangered species conservation and invasive species removal. Much of her work focuses on the infamous brown treesnake invasions of Guam.