Meet the Team

Current Members of the Kloepper Lab

Dr. Laura Kloepper is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. Her research focuses on acoustic sensory ecology: how animals use sound to explore their environment. Her principal research investigates how bats in massive swarms use their sonar and flight behavior to navigate in three dimensions. Additional projects include echolocation in dolphins, the acoustic behavior of shrews, and soundscape ecology. Dr. Kloepper has received a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award. You can find links to her publications on her website, www.laurakloepper.net

Dr. Ian Bentley a computational physicist at Saint Mary’s College. He is currently developing intuitive free software for use in both scientific research and teaching. The software will be used by our group to answer fundamental questions in biology. Dr. Bentley’s other research interests include various topics in nuclear physics and astrophysics.

Dr. Robert Stevenson is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame. He also serves as the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies in Electrical Engineering. His research focuses on statistical signal processing. In particular he focuses on problems related to estimation of real-world information collected by acoustic, light, and motion sensors. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Research Labs, the National Security Agency, Apple Computer, Intel, Motorola, Sun Microsystems and the State of Indiana.

Ali Weesner is a Research Assistant in the Kloepper and Bentley Labs. She graduated with a degree in physics from Indiana University South Bend in 2020. She is working to develop some of the free software for biological analysis used by our laboratory to track bats in flight.

Sarah Austin is a Saint Mary’s College Biology major in the class of 2021. Her research investigates the thermal characteristics of bats in flight.

Joy Fullerton is a Saint Mary’s College Biology major in the class of 2021. Her research investigates the flight behavior of bats in groups.

Valerie Eddington is a Saint Mary’s College Biology major in the class of 2022. She is investigating ultrasonic emission and locomotion behavior in the Northern short-tailed shrew.

Becca Jones is a Saint Mary’s College Biology major in the class of 2023. She is leading the project investigating the acoustics of study spaces on campus.

Past Members of the Kloepper Lab

Maggie Gleason is a Saint Mary’s College Biology major in the class of 2020. Her research investigates the acoustic behavior of the Northern Short-tailed shrew.

Marlen Terrazas is a Saint Mary’s College Biology major in the class of 2020. Her research investigates the effects of anthropogenic noise on the local soundscape.

Kathryn McGowan is a biology major of the class of 2019 at Saint Mary’s College. Her research investigated the effect of daylight on echolocation signals in Brazilian free-tailed bats. She is the lead author on a 2020 paper in Animal Behaviour and a coauthor on a 2021 paper in Behavioural Ecology.

Lily Zusi is a biology major of the class of 2019 at Saint Mary’s College. Her research investigated the flight behavior of Swainson’s hawks preying upon Brazilian free-tailed bats. She is a coauthor on a 2021 paper in Behavioural Ecology.

Morgan Kinniry is a biology major of the class of 2018 at Saint Mary’s College. Her research investigated changes in bat echolocation calls during roost re-entry and she returned in the summer of 2018 as a research technician. She is a coauthor on a 2018 paper in Methods in Ecology and Evolution and Scientific Reports. 

Allison Pudlo is a biology major of the class of 2017 at Saint Mary’s College. Her research investigated the effect of environmental parameters on owl vocalizations. She served as a research technician for the Kloepper Lab from 2017-2019. She is the lead author on a 2019 paper in JASA-EL.

Kaitlyn Cartone is a biology major of the class of 2018 at Saint Mary’s College. Her research investigated bat species on and around Saint Mary’s campus.

Makenzie Duncan is a biology major of the class of 2018 at Saint Mary’s College. Her research investigated the bacterial species and abundance in bat guano, and she discovered a new species of bacteria living inside a guano pile! She is a coauthor on a 2018 paper in Frontiers in Microbiology and the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology

Bailey Oppman is a biology major of the class of 2018 at Saint Mary’s College. Her research  investigated how bats change flight paths to avoid mid-air collisions.

Stephanie Dreessen is a biology major of the class of 2017 at Saint Mary’s College. Her research investigated how emergence density affected acoustic characteristics of echolocating bats.

Cassi Mardis is a biology major of the class of 2017 at Saint Mary’s College. Her research investigated how environmental factors affected Brazilian free-tailed bat emergence.

Yanqing “Felix” Fu is a former postdoctoral research fellow in the biology department at Saint Mary’s College. He is the lead author on a 2018 paper in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America and Methods in Ecology and Evolution.