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Profile for Todd Osmundson

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Todd Osmundson

Pronouns: He/His
Professor
Biology
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

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Todd Osmundson Pronouns: He/His

Professor

Biology

Specialty area(s)

Mycology (Fungal Biology), Biodiversity & conservation, Biogeography, Bioinformatics, DNA barcoding, Metagenomics, Phylogenetics, Population genetics, and Systematics. Please contact me if you have any interest in undergraduate or graduate (MS) research in these topics.

Brief biography

I am a fungal biologist interested in fungi in nature (especially mushrooms) and medically-relevant fungi. I use several kinds of genetic data, including genomics, transcriptomics, and DNA barcoding, to study the biology of these organisms. I have had the opportunity to conduct fieldwork in Australia, China, Costa Rica, French Polynesia, Guatemala, Mexico, Svalbard, Thailand, Canada, and the United States, in tropical, temperate, arctic, and alpine biomes. I am also very interested in bioinformatics and computational biology, especially the analysis of high-throughput ("next-gen") sequence data for genomics, population genetics, biodiversity research, microbiome diversity, and transcriptomics (gene expression studies); these interests have provided me with the opportunity to collaborate with researchers at UWL and elsewhere on organisms including insects, fish, soil microbes, aquatic microbes, and mollusks.

Some of the areas of current research in my lab include understanding the invasion history of the cultivated golden oyster mushroom (Pleurotus citrinopileatus), species discovery and phylogenetics in the bolete genus Tylopilus, understanding the biology of post-fire morel mushrooms (genus Morchella), characterizing Driftless area fungal biodiversity, and studies of alpine fungi.

Current courses at UWL

  • Organismal Biology (BIO 203) Lecture & Lab
  • Genetics (BIO 306) Lecture & Lab

Education

  • Postdoctoral researcher, Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy & Management, University of California, Berkeley
  • Ph.D., Department of Ecology, Evolution & Environmental Biology, Columbia University
    Advanced certificate in Environmental Policy, Columbia University
  • M.S., Department of Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology, Montana State University
  • B.A., Biology, University of Montana
  • B.A., Geology, Carleton College

Career

Teaching history

  • First-year Seminar (FYS 100): "Interpreting Life’s Instruction Book: What Genomes Tell Us About Ourselves, Our Pathogens, and Our World"
  • General Biology (BIO 105) 
  • Organismal Biology (BIO 203) 
  • Genetics (BIO 306)
  • Mycology (BIO 412/512)
  • Medical Mycology (BIO 413/513)
  • Evolution (BIO 429/529)
  • Bioinformatics (BIO 440/540)
  • Plant-Microbe Interactions (BIO 442/542)
  • Seminar in Biology - Genome Data Analysis (BIO 460)
  • Senior Capstone Seminar (BIO 491)
  • 21st-Century Mycology (BIO 723)
  • Mycology reading group

Kudos

published

Todd Osmundson, Biology, authored the article "Thomas J. Volk (January 28, 1959–November 28, 2022): Mycologist for all people" in Mycologia, published on Jan. 5 by the Mycological Society of America / Taylor & Francis. Additional authors include Harold H. Burdsall, Daniel L. Lindner, and UWL graduate student Cara Senn.

Submitted on: Jan. 19

published

Todd Osmundson, Biology, co-authored the article "Does One Size Fit All? Variations in the DNA Barcode Gaps of Macrofungal Genera" in Journal of Fungi published on July 26 by MDPI.

Submitted on: Sept. 3, 2023

published

Todd Osmundson and David Schumann, both Biology, co-authored the article "Unlocking the genomes of formalin-fixed freshwater fish specimens: an assessment of factors influencing DNA extraction quantity and quality" in the North American Journal of Fisheries Management and was accepted for publication by the American Fisheries Society. The first author of the study was Erin Brino, recent graduate of the Master of Science degree program in Biology, Aquatic Science Concentration.

Submitted on: Sept. 3, 2023

published

Scott Cooper, Jennifer Klein, Todd Osmundson, Anton Sanderfoot, Jaclyn Wisinski and Alder Yu, all Biology, co-authored the article "Instructional Innovations in College-Level Molecular Bioscience Labs during the Pandemic-Induced Shift to Online Learning" in Education Sciences published on Wednesday, March 23 by MDPI. Educ. Sci. 2022, 12(4), 230; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12040230

Submitted on: Mar. 23, 2022