Adam B. Smith, Associate Scientist: Adam addresses the impacts global change (climate change, land use/land cover, invasive specie, etc.) will have on individual species and their communities and means by which human intervention can facilitate adaptive responses.
Ethan Abercrombie (graduate student, 2021-present): Ethan is a grad student at Washington University in Saint Louis interested in how climate change is affecting montane ecosystems. In the Global Change & Conservation Lab, he’s examining thermophilization of mammalian communities in western North America. Ethan earned his undergraduate degree from Humboldt State University.
James Ojascastro (graduate student, 2021+): James is a polymath interested in plants, origami, and how people make their livelihoods making paper. An avid origamist himself, James applying tools traditionally used in community ecology and biogeography to assess why certain plants are used for making paper and how climate change could affect the traditional paper-making industry in Nepal.
Lauren Jenkins (biogeography researcher, 2021-2022): Lauren is an NSF-sponsored “post-bach” who is comparing pollen-vegetation models and species distribution models for reconstructing species’ biogeographic histories. Lauren recently graduated from Wheaton College and has served as a research assistant at Argonne National Laboratory.
Matthew Austin (Postdoc, 2020-present): Matthew is a postdoc with the Living Earth Collaborative studying how climate-induced flowering phenology shifts impact interspecific pollen transfer and the evolution of mating systems. Matthew is broadly interested in how pollination systems respond to environmental variability and graduated from the University of Missouri—Saint Louis. (Sponsored by the Living Earth Collaborative.)
Dr. Kelley Erickson (Postdoctotal Fellow, 2018-2022): Kelley is a postdoc working on a project sponsored by the Institute for Museum and Library Services to use erstwhile “unusable” museum and herbarium records in species distribution models. She has a background in invasive species demography and graduated from the University of Miami.
Kelsey Bartlett (Research Intern in 2020, Shirley Graham Fellow in 2021): Kelsey is conducting a research project on phenology of the gladecress genus, Leavenworthia, using herbarium specimens gathered over the past century. During her internship, she did the complicated, detailed task of georeferencing herbarium records of Asclepias (milkweeds) while also camera trapping wildlife (with another lab) and working as a student at George Washington University.
Dr. Stephen Murphy (Postdoctoral Fellow, 2018-2020): Stephen combined aspects of biogeography and macroecology with his ongoing work in community ecology. Stephen graduated from Ohio State University, and was supported by a grant from the Institute for Museum and Library Services for developing and testing methods for using vaguely georeferenced and dated herbarium and natural history museum records.
David Henderson (Ph.D. Student on rotation, Spring 2019): David is a grad student on rotation as part of his degree at Washington University in Saint Louis. He is broadly interested in global change. His project in our lab entailed understanding how the common practice of discarding “vaguely” georeferenced specimens before analysis affects estimates of range size and niche breadth.
Tom Collins (Conservation Intern, summer 2018): Tom worked on an exploratory project to predict the potential impact of autonomous vehicles on urban sprawl and conservation land. (Sponsored by the Alan Graham Fund in Global Change.)
Renee Klann (REU Participant, summer 2018): Renee was a participant in the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Research Experience for Undergraduates program in which she completed a project on poaching threatened/rare plant species. (Sponsored by the NSF.)
Dr. Camilo Sanín (Postdoctotal Fellow, 2016-2017): Camilo developed the bayesLopod modeling system which can use erstwhile “unusable” natural history museum records in species distribution models. (Sponsored by the Institute for Museum and Library Services.)
Renata Diaz (Conservation Intern, summer 2017): Renata is a seasoned field biologist who, while in the Global Change Lab, examined how well we can predict threats to rare plants from readily-available GIS data. (Sponsored by the Alan Graham Fund in Global Change.)
Dr. Mimi Kessler (Spatial Analyst, 2016-2017): Mimi Kessler is originally from San Diego County, California. She earned her Ph.D. in Biology from Arizona State University for work that involved analysis of the movements and habitat use of endangered bird populations. While in the Global Change Lab, Mimi examined spatially-varying controls on the range of the climate-sensitive North American pika (Ochotona princeps).
Haydée Hernández-Yáñez (Conservation Intern, 2014-2015): Haydée is a methodological virtuoso who assessed threats to all of the rare plants of the United States. (Sponsored by the Alan Graham Fund in Global Change.)