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Research focuses on understanding evolutionary patterns, processes, populations, and species. The primary focus is on islands, particularly remote hotspot islands in the Pacific. Hotspot archipelagoes - islands emanating from a single volcanic hotspot and progressively carried away by a geological plate - allow for examination of communities that change over time, thus gaining insight into the nature of processes shaping communities over evolutionary time. These archipelagoes make it possible to visualize snapshots of evolutionary history. For example, the geological history of the Hawaiian archipelago is relatively well understood, with individual islands arranged linearly by age. Thus, the early stages of diversification and community formation can be studied on the island of Hawaii, which is still forming, versus the progressively older islands of Maui, Lanai, Molokai, Oahu, and Kauai. A roughly similar chronological arrangement is found in the archipelagoes of the Marquesas in French Polynesia.
The Mathematics Subject GRE is required for the Fall 2026 admissions cycle. General GRE is optional.