Dr. Van Wishingrad, UCSC Postdoctoral Researcher, CALeDNA x NPS Lead

Van joined UCSC in January 2022 after completing a PhD at the University of Hawaii at Honolulu in Robert Thomson’s lab. Van’s an expert in landscape genomics/genetics and environmental gradients of California, combining these data types to ask questions about how climate influences genetic variation across space and time. He’s currently working on eDNA from different National Parks and Tribal lands to help advance eDNA biomonitoring of invasive species and total communities. As an alumnus of UCSC and a forever banana slug, it’s no surprise that on the side, he shapes surf boards and knows where to get candy cap ice cream.

Dr. Ariel Levi Simons, UCSC Postdoctoral Researcher, Community Web Tools Captain

Levi joined UCSC in January 2022 after completing a postdoc at UCLA in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. He earned his PhD in the Nuzhdin Lab at USC. Levi is the researcher and front-end scientist for new web tools CALeDNA is developing. He is an expert in machine learning, species distribution modeling, indicator species assignment, and light pollution. He is part of LA’s Crash Space community and does a lot of weird art - science stuff. He’s worked with Rachel on eDNA since 2018.

Madeline Slimp, UCSC EEB Graduate Student

Madeline joined UCSC from Texas Tech where she worked with Dr. Matthew Johnson on hybridization sequencing (capture baits) from antique plants to get population genetic data. At UCSC, Madeline is leading projects on ancient environmental DNA from southern California to ask ethnoecological questions, and is working on cultivated plants of California. Madeline is funded by NASA to do ethnobotanical surveys, vegetation mapping, and eDNA inventories of watersheds in South Africa, where she’ll be traveling this September 2022. She has a side project working with UC Merced on a pop-gen and eDNA project on the invasive water primrose in California.

Haylee Bregoff, undergraduate researcher, completed her thesis project, now working in the Gilbert Lab at UCSC!

Haylee recently graduated with a degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCSC. She has special interest in biodiversity and particularly, fungi. Her current research is on how the Woolsey Fire affected the biodiversity of lagoons and inland parks in Malibu. For this project, she is working with Sabrina Shirazi (former UCSC graduate student) and Rachel Turba de Paula (UCLA graduate student) and with UCSC postdoc Levi Simons.

Colin Fairbairn, PGL lab tech

My name is Colin Fairbairn and I am a recent UCSC alumn studying ecology with a focus on plants.  I love to combine fieldwork trips with climbing, backpacking, and biking trips to feed two birds with one scone.

Milagros Rivera, undergraduate RMI fellow

Milagros works with several labs in EEB and has a passion for applying different techniques to help understand the health and ecology of marine mammals. She has worked with elephant seals at Ano Nuevo for years. As an RMI Fellow with the UCSC Genomics Institute, Milagros works with Rachel and others in the lab on eDNA projects. She has helped with projects on tropical island biodiversity, with the LA River project, and others.

Suzanne Lipton, UCSC Environmental Science Graduate Student

Suzanne is a third year PhD student in Dr. Philpott's lab (Ants Lab). She holds a Master of Public Administration in Environmental Science and Policy from Columbia University and a BA from the University of Michigan. Her post college-pre-graduate school experience working in the restaurant industry, particularly as a pastry chef in farm to table restaurants, led to her interest in sustainable agriculture and agrifood systems. Before pursuing her Ph.D. she worked for for several non-profits focused on food and agriculture and was Assistant Director at the Earth Institute Center for Environmental Sustainability at Columbia University. She is co-author on a book Sustainable Food Production: A Primer for the 21st Century. In the Meyer Lab, Suzanne uses eDNA to measure microbiomes in soil that are shaped by dung beetles. Dung beetles may be putting carbon back in the ground!