Biography

I am a theoretical and computational ecologist. My research program is motivated by the pervasive existence of context-dependency—results are only true under particular circumstances—in ecological systems, which fundamentally hinders generalization and prediction under uncertainty. To address this problem, my research centers on developing a theoretically rigorous and computationally feasible ‘common currency’, and using the common currency to synthesize empirical findings across study systems and scales.

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.

You can reach me via email: clsong.ecology AT gmail DOT com.