I am a theoretical and computational ecologist. My research program aims to forecast the dynamics of ecological systems under unforeseen environmental conditions, and under incomplete information about the entire system. To this end, my work centers on developing rigorous theory through interdisciplinary tools, devising monitoring-applicable metrics, and validating these approaches with empirical data from a broad range of ecosystems.
I am currently a postdoc with Jonathan Levine at Princeton University. I was a postdoc co-supervised by Andrew Gonzalez at McGill University and Marie-Josée Fortin at University of Toronto from 2020-2022. I received a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from MIT under the supervision of Serguei Saavedra, and a BS in Mathematics from Zhejiang University under the supervision of Yang-Yu Liu.
I serve as a subject-matter editor at Ecological Monographs and a data editor at Ecology Letters.
You can reach me via email: clsong.ecology AT gmail DOT com.
PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2016 - 2020
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
BSc in Mathematics, 2013 - 2016
Zhejiang University
How to make robust assessment when only small subsets of ecosystems can be monitored
Under what conditions different theoretical approaches tell a similar story, and what can be learned when they do not coincide.
Exploring the full landscape of priority effects with graph theory and algebraic topology
How the architecture of species interactions affects species coexistence in fluctuating environemnts
Combing theory and theory to identify the structure of ecological dynamics