Theo Gibbs received a B.S. in Mathematics with Honors from the University of Chicago, where he characterized how population abundances affect the stability of large random ecosystems.  He then spent a year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, working on theory for microbial communities. 

As a QCB graduate student at Princeton advised by Simon Levin and Jonathan Levine, Theo is interested in how higher-order interactions affect species coexistence in diverse ecological communities.  Higher-order interactions emerge when the direct effect of one species on other changes in the presence of a third species.  Although these kinds of interactions are likely frequent in nature, they are missing from most classical ecological models.  Theo combines ecological theory and experimental data from annual plant communities to understand whether or not higher-order interactions can explain the coexistence we observe in nature.  Aside from research, Theo likes to play soccer and discover new music.