{"id":790,"date":"2026-08-07T17:16:29","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T21:16:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/biology\/gaitherlab\/?post_type=person&#038;p=790"},"modified":"2026-08-08T12:20:52","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T16:20:52","slug":"ivan-r-lopez-martinez","status":"publish","type":"person","link":"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/biology\/gaitherlab\/person\/ivan-r-lopez-martinez\/","title":{"rendered":"Iv\u00e1n R. L\u00f3pez Mart\u00ednez"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Iv\u00e1n R. L\u00f3pez Mart\u00ednez\u00a0is a PhD student and McKnight Doctoral Fellow. Iv\u00e1n is interested in fishes, genomics, evolution, ecology, ethology, and how these disciplines can be synthesized to bolster conservation efforts and inform policy. Iv\u00e1n was inspired by the efforts of researchers in the 1960s whose work dominated popular aquarium hobby books. In his lifetime, Iv\u00e1n has witnessed first-hand how a habitat can shift from a healthy robust back-reef nearly reaching the shore at low tide to a barren sandy bottom. His research investigates temporal and spatial genomic shifts in coastal fish populations. His work compares legacy specimens collected in the late 1800s with their modern descendants using whole-genome sequencing and bioinformatics.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Iv\u00e1n earned his M.S. and B.S. degrees in Marine Biology from Old Dominion University under the mentorship of Dr. Kent Carpenter, and an A.S. in Science from Tidewater Community College. While at ODU, Iv\u00e1n was the project administrator for NSF grant #1743711, PIRE: Centennial Genetic and Species Transformations in the Epicenter of Marine Biodiversity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iv\u00e1n R. L\u00f3pez Mart\u00ednez\u00a0is a PhD student and McKnight Doctoral Fellow. Iv\u00e1n is interested in fishes, genomics, evolution, ecology, ethology, and how these disciplines can be synthesized to bolster conservation efforts and inform policy. Iv\u00e1n was inspired by the efforts of researchers in the 1960s whose work dominated popular aquarium hobby books. In his lifetime, [&hellip;]","protected":false},"featured_media":827,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"people_group":[5],"class_list":["post-790","person","type-person","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","people_group-graduate-student"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Iv\u00e1n R. 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