It seems like every wildlife biologist has a bio that starts out explaining how their love of the outdoors as a child shaped their career - Well, I hate to be unoriginal, but it's so true! I was raised in the woods of coastal California, where the creek behind our home held yearly tadpoles and salamanders, deer grazed in the meadow out the front door, and a stand of redwood trees up the hill housed owls, raccoons, and coyotes. Between the idyllic settings, loving parents that invested incredible time, energy, and support in our educations, and a "little" brother who was (and still is) an ever-willing partner in adventures, it was almost inevitable I would find my calling in an academic field focused on the kingdom of wild creatures.
My academic journey began in middle and high school, when I started taking as many physical science classes as I could at community college. From the introductory courses in astronomy, geology, and biology which first captured my imagination, I progressed to the physics, calculus, and chemistry series. With those completed I was able to transfer to the University of California at Davis in 2007 with considerably more credits than they would accept. Once there, I planned on a biological sciences degree, but wasn't really sure about my emphasis. I considered genetics (I mean, who doesn't think Punnett squares are awesome!) but after reading through the course catalog, I found this department called Wildlife Fish and Conservation Biology. It was like the cartoons - the light bulb went off over my head. I wanted to take every single class offered through WFCB. But, with only a year left to finish my bachelor's degree at that point, I decided against changing my major; I graduated in June 2009 with a Biological Sciences major emphasizing in Ecology, a minor in WFCB, and I headed out the next week for my first field job.
That summer, my trajectory as a field-oriented wildlife researcher was set in stone. I was assisting a Black-tailed deer research effort, with specific focus on the habitat use and mortality factors for neonates. It turns out I'm the sort of person who loves living in a tent, driving around spot lighting all night, and spending exhausted hours in the truck the next day listening to the endless static of a radio telemetry receiver. Over the next five years I worked on black-tailed deer, mountain lion, fisher, elk and black bear projects, using research methods ranging from telemetry, tracking, and kill site analysis to remote cameras, hair snares and pellet transects.
I’m a conservation biologist at heart; I am fascinated by the interaction of species together and with their environment, and motivated by the urgency to understand and protect ecosystems. After years of thinking about graduate school, I could not have been more lucky to join the Tim Van Deelen lab for a master's degree at the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology in Madison, WI. The town, the seasons, and especially my advisors (shout at to Shawn Crimmins up at Point) and my beyond-wonderful fellow graduate students made leaving the west coast (best coast!) behind exciting and rewarding. They instilled in me perhaps unwarranted confidence, and I am now even farther from my Cali roots in the great state of Maine. It really is the way life should be out here, and working in the Mortelliti Lab, and in partnership with IFW, is a dream job. Give me 130 trail cameras, two snowmobiles, and a rigorous study design and I'm set for the next few years!
When I’m not in the field, reading for classes, or battling through R code, I enjoy being perpetually rebuffed by my cats, and when I'm not too lazy I attempt rock climbing, martial arts, running, and cooking ever odder vegetarian experiments.
My academic journey began in middle and high school, when I started taking as many physical science classes as I could at community college. From the introductory courses in astronomy, geology, and biology which first captured my imagination, I progressed to the physics, calculus, and chemistry series. With those completed I was able to transfer to the University of California at Davis in 2007 with considerably more credits than they would accept. Once there, I planned on a biological sciences degree, but wasn't really sure about my emphasis. I considered genetics (I mean, who doesn't think Punnett squares are awesome!) but after reading through the course catalog, I found this department called Wildlife Fish and Conservation Biology. It was like the cartoons - the light bulb went off over my head. I wanted to take every single class offered through WFCB. But, with only a year left to finish my bachelor's degree at that point, I decided against changing my major; I graduated in June 2009 with a Biological Sciences major emphasizing in Ecology, a minor in WFCB, and I headed out the next week for my first field job.
That summer, my trajectory as a field-oriented wildlife researcher was set in stone. I was assisting a Black-tailed deer research effort, with specific focus on the habitat use and mortality factors for neonates. It turns out I'm the sort of person who loves living in a tent, driving around spot lighting all night, and spending exhausted hours in the truck the next day listening to the endless static of a radio telemetry receiver. Over the next five years I worked on black-tailed deer, mountain lion, fisher, elk and black bear projects, using research methods ranging from telemetry, tracking, and kill site analysis to remote cameras, hair snares and pellet transects.
I’m a conservation biologist at heart; I am fascinated by the interaction of species together and with their environment, and motivated by the urgency to understand and protect ecosystems. After years of thinking about graduate school, I could not have been more lucky to join the Tim Van Deelen lab for a master's degree at the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology in Madison, WI. The town, the seasons, and especially my advisors (shout at to Shawn Crimmins up at Point) and my beyond-wonderful fellow graduate students made leaving the west coast (best coast!) behind exciting and rewarding. They instilled in me perhaps unwarranted confidence, and I am now even farther from my Cali roots in the great state of Maine. It really is the way life should be out here, and working in the Mortelliti Lab, and in partnership with IFW, is a dream job. Give me 130 trail cameras, two snowmobiles, and a rigorous study design and I'm set for the next few years!
When I’m not in the field, reading for classes, or battling through R code, I enjoy being perpetually rebuffed by my cats, and when I'm not too lazy I attempt rock climbing, martial arts, running, and cooking ever odder vegetarian experiments.
Personal Trivia
You might not guess it now, but I used to be squeamish and afraid of heights. But I didn't want to miss out on fantastic adventures from rock climbing, mountain hiking and sky diving (only once) to, of course, gutting road kill deer for carnivore research (many, many times), so I went for 'em anyway! I'm still getting used to walking across frozen lakes, but the challenge/terror makes it fun...
