STORIES

Wes Binder

PhD student – NSF Fellow Originally from Michigan, I have spent the last ten years working for various wildlife research projects that have largely focused on mammalian population dynamics. From studying spotted hyenas in Kenya to cougars and mule deer in northern California, I have spent a lot of time in the field collecting data, […]

Emily Dziedzic

MS Student The route I took to become a Master’s student in the Levi Lab was fairly circuitous. A large swath of conservation land was my playground growing up and I was academically inclined toward quantitative pursuits but I took a detour through the art world before coming back to computer programming as a webmaster […]

Meredith Pochardt

MS Winter 2019 (Now Executive Director of Takshanuk Watershed Council) Growing up in upstate New York and spending lots of time tromping through streams and fields instilled a wonder about ecology. This continued through my undergraduate studies at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF, “stumpies”) where I majored […]

Derek Spitz

Former Postdoctoral Research Associate, now postdoc at UC Santa Cruz For many species, fitness is a function of an individual’s ability to match his or her behavior to available conditions. Thus in making decisions that affect their fitness, animals translate the conditions they experience into demographic consequences at the individual and population levels. I’m interested […]

Brent Barry

MS Spring 2018 (Now Wildlife Biologist with Confederated Tribes of the Grande Ronde) I grew up outside of Chicago and spent my youth wandering the forests and lakes of the upper Midwest.  After receiving my undergraduate degree from the University of Vermont I moved west and have worked in many different places.  Most of my […]

Laurie Harrer

MS Fall 2017 (now instructor at Oregon State University – Cascades) I have worked in various fish and wildlife positions across the Western United States. I worked for the Birds and Burns project at Montana State University where I earned my B.S. in Fish and Wildlife Science. After graduating, I interned at an environmental consulting […]

Yasaman Shakeri

MS Winter 2017 (now Wildlife Biologist with Alaska Department of Fish and Game) Over the past five years I have been involved in various wildlife projects throughout the Western United States. I began working with small mammals and pumas while pursuing my Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz. After […]

Felipe Pedrosa

Visiting PhD student There is no place in the world humankind has not put its footprint. Few remote places on earth are still primeval and healthy, but most of them have suffered habitat loss, defaunation, introduction of alien species, and many are degraded ecosystems. The role of the ecologist in the 21st century should be to […]

Leona Wai

Visiting MS student I was born and raised in Borneo, Malaysia and doing a 5-months internship with the Fisheries and Wildlife Department, under the supervision of Nicole Duplaix and Taal Levi. I have finished my Bachelor degree in Conservation Biology in 2015 and currently pursuing my MSc in Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS). My MSc project […]

Disease Ecology

We work on a variety of disease systems. In the past, the community ecology of Lyme disease and tick-borne pathogens was a major focus. Currently we work on how deforestation in the southern Amazon interacts with biodiversity (hosts), vectors, and pathogens to influence disease risk to humans. Our primary focus is Leishmaniasis, which is transmitted […]