For my PhD in the Department of Organismic & Evolutionary Biology at Harvard, I use transdisciplinary methodologies to explore human-lion dynamics across scales, with much fieldwork in Laikipia, Kenya. I am exploring socioecological patterns of human-lion dynamics across the lion’s African range through literature review. I will also zoom in to investigate the detailed effects of individual and demographic variation on these dynamics among lions and people in northern Laikipia via integrated ecological and sociological fieldwork (e.g., GPS tracking, remote sensing, social surveys), as well as spatially-explicit statistical analyses. Finally, I will utilize socioecological systems approaches to create and test predictive models of human-lion dynamics across multiple landscapes. This work is advised by Dr. Andrew Davies and done in partnership with Laikipian communities, Lion Landscapes, WildCRU, and multiple Kenyan institutions.

With the 2018 Watson Fellowship, I explored biophilia and felid conservation around the world for one year. I delved into socioecological questions such as if scent “bio-boundaries” could deter predators from ranches, how major cities differed in their incorporation of wildlife, and what constituted viable ecotourism. The experiences accrued from visiting 17 countries are impossible to describe briefly. However, some highlights included: patrolling with anti-poaching elephant teams in Indonesia; tracking lions and African wild dogs using radio telemetry, then identifying individuals from unique markings, in Botswana; training with scat detection dogs, analyzing livestock guarding dog demographics, and assisting with ex situ cheetah conservation in Namibia; searching for Iberian lynx in Spain; interviewing victims of human-wildlife conflict and learning about the tiger reserve system in India; observing trust between individual pumas and people in Chile; examining tourism impacts and documenting jaguar nocturnal behavior in Brazil. Throughout my fellowship, I collaborated with communities and organizations such as WWF Indonesia, Botswana Predator Conservation Trust, Cheetah Conservation Fund, WildCRU, Centre for Wildlife Studies, and Panthera.

For my honors thesis at Rice University, I studied the effects of logging activity on jaguar habitat use in multi-use landscapes of the Selva Maya, Belize. Fieldwork included working with a multicultural team to implement a large-scale camera trap survey in remote rainforest. With camera trap data, I modeled jaguar occurrence in relation to various logging and landscape features to understand the fine-scale effects of selective logging on jaguar habitat use with generalized linear models. Our findings suggest that jaguars avoid specific logging areas, which can inform conservation management for the mutual benefit of people and wildlife. This research was advised by Drs. Amy Dunham and Marcella Kelly.

Relevant awards: NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, Harvard Graduate Prize Fellowship, Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, Distinction in Research, Wagoner Foreign Study Scholarship, Rice Undergraduate Scholars Program grant, Rice Undergraduate Research Symposium Top Natural Sciences Poster