After my year working on the monkey project from
2005-2006, I moved to Boston to take a full time research assistant position
working for Dr. Cheryl Knott, who studies orangutan behavioral ecology. I
worked for her for two years as I decided that I wanted to go to graduate
school and worked on my applications. Getting the chance to spend time around
grad students without being one myself was a fantastic opportunity to learn
about the ups and downs of graduate school and the types of things that are
important for success.
I earned my PhD in the Graduate Group in Ecology
at the University of California, Davis where I worked with Professor Andrew J.
Marshall in the Department of Anthropology. Andy has taken several Lomas alumni
as graduate students because he knows monkey project personnel are hard
working, tough and determined, including Katie Feilen. She and I had a lot of
fun as labmates and finished our PhDs at the same time. That’s us together at
UCD graduation in 2014 in the picture (I am on the left, Katie on the right).
Since leaving Davis, I worked at Conservation
International for the Tropical Ecology Assessment and Monitoring (TEAM)
Network. TEAM monitors over 500 populations of mammals and birds in tropical
forest protected areas around the world using standardized arrays of camera
traps. I was brought in as a postdoc to analyze and synthesize long-term data
from the TEAM Network. Working for a non-profit was a completely different
experience from graduate school and I loved being a part of such a large-scale
project. I continue to work closely with TEAM in my current position as a
Michigan Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology &
Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan. And I will continue to work
with TEAM as I transition to the BioSciences Department at Rice University for
the 2018-2019 academic year. I’m looking for graduate students and postdocs to
join my lab at Rice, so definitely get in touch if you’re interested! Here’s a link to my webpage where you can check out
our research.