Yijie Shen (he/him) got his bachelor degree in entomology from Purdue University, where he focused on beetle taxonomy and pest management.
At the E3B Bug Lab, Yijie is developing a research project focused on marine coastal ground beetles (Carabidae) in New York City in collaboration with and support of RISE Rockaway and NYC Parks. His master’s research integrates open-access biodiversity data from GBIF with standardized pitfall trapping across reclaimed and reference coastal habitats to evaluate whether public biodiversity records can reliably detect population trends.
Yijie is also the owner of an exotic pet invertebrate business, where he provides unique and visually striking invertebrates while educating customers about responsible care and conservation awareness. Beyond entomology, he enjoys movies, video games, badminton, tennis, playing piano, and reading.
Yijie is also the owner of an exotic pet invertebrate business, where he provides unique and visually striking invertebrates while educating customers about responsible care and conservation awareness. Beyond entomology, he enjoys movies, video games, badminton, tennis, playing piano, and reading.
Contact email: ys4015@columbia.edu
Ke Coco Deng (she/her) recieved a scholarship through Great Hollow Nature Preserve and is researching the spotted lanternfly, focusing on vibratory communication, microhabitat use, and how environmental context influences signal transmission. Her work integrates behavioral ecology with applied questions about management, including how understanding communication systems may inform control strategies for this introduced species.
Prior to joining the lab, Coco graduated from Bard College at Simon’s Rock, where she completed a thesis on vertebrate pollination on the Caribbean island of Montserrat. She has worked in a variety of ecological field settings, including researching Hawaiian honeycreepers with the Kauai Forest Bird Recovery Project and monitoring seabird colonies with Project Puffin. These experiences shaped her interest in species interactions, conservation biology, and the intersection of behavioral ecology and management.
Yuhyun Kim (he/ him) is interested in insect ecology, conservation biology, and biodiversity responses to environmental change. His current research focuses on saproxylic beetle communities in the Iron Gates Natural Park, Romania, funded in part by the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, where he uses occupancy modeling and semiochemical survey methods to investigate how environmental gradients and forest structure influence beetle species richness and community composition.
Yuhyun earned his B.A. in Chemistry from Rutgers University in 2025, where he studied organic synthesis, chemical probes, and the molecular ecology of marine invertebrates. It turns out that training in chemistry is excellent preparation for insect ecology, he just had to discover entomology first. He is particularly interested in combining chemical ecology and quantitative analysis with field-based research to advance biodiversity conservation.
Outside the lab, he enjoys traveling, good food, and movies.
Elmina Aghayeva (she/her) graduated from Columbia with a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience and political science, two fields that, combined, make her constitutionally incapable of accepting “we just need more research” as a satisfying answer. In the Bug Lab, she is developing a master’s research project focused on how conservation science moves from publication into practice, examining the political and economic barriers that prevent research from being implemented in the real world. Rather than treating conservation as only a problem of producing better evidence, Elmina is interested in the systems that determine whether that evidence ever gets used.
Outside of research, Elmina enjoys painting, museums, and hunting down the perfect coffee shop.
LAB ALUMNI
Xiaoyan “Yan” Zhang 2024-2026
Caroline Gaskin 2024-2026
Alice Wang 2023-2025
Mads Moore 2023-2025
Altrim Mamuti 2022-2024
Xingya Zhao 2022-2024
Katherine Poulos 2022-2024
Garrett Rees 2022
Maddie Schafer 2022
Wesley Beuck 2020-2022
Sarah Romer 2019-2022
Evelyn Blakeman, 2018-2022
Helen Stec, 2020-2022
Wesley Walsh, 2021-2022
Makayla Deyling, 2021-2022
Emi Olin, 2019-2022
Morgan Bickel, 2019-2020
Madeline Sudnick, 2018-2020
Mitch Duffner, 2018-2020
Glenn Pauley, 2018
Julie Hixon, 2018
Aydan Wilson, 2016-2017
BRODIE BUG LAB 