Carly Coughlin

My path to studying fungi started 2,200 miles into a hike, not a lab. While thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine, I found myself belly-down in the mud photographing mushrooms instead of racing to the next shelter. That curiosity followed me home: I spent years working in biotech, developing gene therapy assays and formulating drug delivery particles by day, while chasing mushroom IDs on weekends.

Eventually those two lives merged. At Harvard, I used my molecular biology background to study the genetic basis of flower color evolution in wildflowers—my first real bridge between molecules and ecosystems. Now, as a PhD student at the University of Maine under Dr. Peter Avis, I'm bringing that same approach to fungi, building the first reference genome for Amanita flavoconia and using it to ask how isolation shapes fungal evolution across Maine's islands.

When I'm not in the lab, I lead mushroom forays, teach outdoor stewardship, and try to get as many people as possible as obsessed with fungi as I am.

September 2026