This year, ESIIL welcomed 5 new postdocs: Karl Andraczek, Sam Lapp, Brian Lee, Wyatt Million, and Yu Peng. Keep reading to learn more about each of them and stay tuned for their upcoming EDS Seminars.

Karl Andraczek

Karl is an ecologist who uses trait-based approaches and causal inference techniques to study the relationship between plant diversity and ecosystem functioning. His interests span both the above- and belowground world of plants, and he is driven by the motivation to find nature-based solutions to extreme climatic events like drought. Before coming to CU Boulder, he received his PhD in Ecology at the University of Leipzig, Germany, and worked as a postdoc at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), where he was PI of an independent research project using belowground plant traits to understand the climate resilience of grasslands. He is excited to collaborate around climate resilience, biodiversity–ecosystem functioning and their feedbacks, and trait ecology.

Brian Lee

Brian is a landscape ecologist who uses remote sensing fusion and machine learning to quantify ecosystem services within working lands, with research interests spanning carbon stocks in plantation forests to insecticide use in agriculture. His work is motivated by a desire to better understand how landscapes change over time and how data-driven science can support more sustainable land management. Before coming to Boulder, he received his PhD at UC Santa Barbara's Bren School, his master's degree at Yale's School of the Environment, and also spent time at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Rwanda. At Boulder, he is excited to build collaborations around climate resilience, ecosystem services, and applied environmental data science.

Sam Lapp

Sam's research leverages emerging artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automated sensing technologies to understand natural ecosystems and inform the conservation of biodiversity. 

At ESIIL, he is advised by Dr. Esther Rolf and Dr. Sara Beery, and his current research projects focus on:

• Training machine learning models to extract rich insights from airborne LiDAR
• Providing user-friendly tools for analyzing passive acoustic monitoring datasets
• Developing automated methods for individual identification of birds by their vocal signatures

Sam's work emphasizes open science and inclusivity. He leads the development of Dipper, a desktop tool for passive acoustic monitoring analysis, and OpenSoundscape, an open-source Python package for bioacoustics analysis. He works closely with ecologists and conservation practitioners to apply these approaches to real-world data, enabling large-scale investigation of ecological processes and supporting conservation decision-making.

Outside of work, Sam spends his time making music, exploring the outdoors, and building community through shared experiences of learning and creative expression.

Wyatt Million

Wyatt is a marine ecologist focusing on tropical coral reefs, acclimatization and adaptation to climate change, and environmental variability's impact on species physiology and distribution. Wyatt received his doctorate at the University of Southern California studying phenotypic plasticity of coral in the Florida Keys. Most recently as a Postdoctoral Associate at the University of Technology Sydney, he explored the consequences of marine deoxygenation for tropical coral on the Great Barrier Reef.

At ESIIL, Wyatt will focus on characterizing dissolved oxygen dynamics on coral reefs around the world to find patterns associated with coral bleaching, reef health, and species distributions. This work will combine a patchwork of dissolved oxygen, temperature, and coral ecological datasets to create tools for assessing deoxygenation on reefs. 

Yu Peng

Yu Peng is an agroecologist dedicated to evaluating and scaling nature-based solutions in managed terrestrial ecosystems to foster ecosystem resilience and services. His research combines field measurements with global synthesis to quantify soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration, greenhouse gas (GHG) dynamics, and nitrogen leaching across diverse agricultural landscapes.

Prior to joining CU Boulder, Yu earned his Ph.D. in Applied Earth and Environmental Sciences from Indiana University, where he evaluated the climate mitigation potential of cover crops in close collaboration with local farmers, regional conservation agencies, and the USGS. He also holds the joint dual M.S. in Environmental Science from the University of Copenhagen and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a B.S. in GIS from Central China Normal University.

At ESIIL, Yu focuses on leveraging AI-powered frameworks to harmonize multi-source datasets spanning lab assays, field observations, literature syntheses, and satellite images. His research aims to scale agricultural nature-based solutions from regional to continental levels and translate global syntheses into mechanistic insights, delivering scalable, science-backed strategies for sustainable agroecosystem functioning.