Isabel Novick

While at Smith, I worked as a Research Assistant in Dr. Elizabeth Jakob's jumping spider lab for 2 years. We studied how their different sets of eyes were used to help them track their prey, and we had a tiny little eye tracker for spiders. During my summers back home in Denver, Colorado, as well as during a semester off, I volunteered at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in the Entomology department. I spent a lot of time pinning dung beetles for Dr. Frank Krell and I accompanied him to the Entomology Society of America conference.

During the summer before my last year, I studied abroad in Panama and Costa Rica with the School for Field Studies and practiced designing field experiments. After graduation, I interned, and then volunteered (couldn't get enough) at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. I worked in their Invertebrate Zoology department, and volunteered in both their Entomology Department and the Ambrose Monell Cryo Collection.

After that, I moved to Boston and started working at the Museum of Science as a Collections Fellow. I dusted dinosaur bones, sorted and catologued bird eggs from the 19th century, and photographed minerals. It was during that time that I was introduced to webbing clothes moths, a common and persistent museum pest, and I have been fascinated by them since then. Once the pandemic hit, I was laid off and decided to pursue my PhD in Evolution, Behavior and Ecology in Dr. Sean Mullen's lab at Boston University. I decided to study clothes moths. I am most interested in how their diet has facilitated their synanthropic life history, and am exploring their population genetics across the globe, as well as investigating the role of their microbiome in keratin digestion.

I also teach at BU, and have taught Evolutionary Ecology, Evolution, Plant Biology, Conservation Biology, and Introductory Biology.