Austin C. Russell, Ph.D.

Austin is a postdoctoral research associate in the Gross Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati, where he studies how sensory systems evolve — presently through taste-receptor diversification in Astyanax mexicanus, the Mexican cavefish, whose surface- and cave-dwelling morphotypes make it a natural experiment in adaptation to permanent darkness.

His path here has run through salamander plots in Ohio's second-growth forests, shorebird nests on the Massachusetts coast, hellbender streams in Appalachia, and five field seasons banding chickadees along a Pennsylvania hybrid zone — a route that keeps circling back to the same question: how do microbes, genes, and environment interact to shape which organisms an ecosystem keeps, and how they sense the world around them?

He completed his Ph.D. in Biology at Lehigh University under Dr. Amber M. Rice, where his dissertation examined gut microbiome diversity in hybridizing Black-capped and Carolina Chickadees. Alongside starting his postdoc, he spent the spring 2026 semester teaching Animal Behavior as an adjunct instructor at Thomas More University. Outside the lab, he coaches high school soccer — having captained his own teams through high school and college — and works to bring hands-on science to classrooms and outreach events around greater Cincinnati.