Jarome is from Trinidad and was based at Imperial College London in England where he was co-supervised by Joseph Tobias. He is now a PhD student at Princeton University.

Erin is now a postdoctoral researcher at NASA JPL. 

I am broadly interested in leveraging remote sensing and geospatial technologies to improve public land management. As a plant ecologist, I focus on studying how climate and land use drive variation in plant communities across landscapes and time. My research combines field and greenhouse experiments with landscape-level studies in order to untangle the mechanisms driving the observed relationships, including community interactions, plant-soil feedbacks, and ecophysiology. I am currently particularly interested in the potential to use remote sensing and machine learning to predict intraspecific variation at broad scales, and for results, when paired with understanding of the ecological implications of the observed variation, to improve land management practices. My previous research includes studying the impact of drought on plant-soil feedbacks in Missouri tallgrass prairies, and the impact of land use change on the distribution of native orchid diversity in northwestern Virginia.

Andréa is from Reunion Island and was based at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, France. She was co-supervised by Yadvinder Malhi.

I am interested in large scale and local scale geographic distributions of plant species, and how past distributions of humans have potentially influenced these distributions. I am also interested in researching plant functional traits and phenotypic integration, the linkages between useful plant diversity and overall biodiversity, and the factors that can predispose a species to being useful (both for ethnobotanical use and for restoration purposes). I would potentially like to research how contemporary use diversity of plant species (such as Sonoran desert species) can be expanded.

I work in California’s mixed​-​conifer forests where disturbance regimes, especially wildfire, drive community composition and ecosystem function. Currently, I am focused on leveraging reconstruction techniques from paleo-ecology to compare modern forests to those from the late-Holocene and early California settlement. My field sites are located in the Six Rivers National Forest, CA. I am also convinced that scientific research should not remain abstract and unsullied by real-world problems, which has led to my interest in the application of science to recalcitrant environmental challenges. I am currently part of a team of scientists working on California’s 4th Climate Assessment Report to be published in summer 2018. Before starting a PhD at UC Berkeley in 2016, I received two masters degrees — an MSc in Water Policy and an MSc in Biodiversity Conservation — from the University of Oxford where I studied as a Rhodes Scholar, and a BA in Chemistry from Smith College.

I am a plant community ecologist and study how species interactions, dispersal, and functional traits influence demography and community assembly. I work in alpine and tundra plant communities, as well as with quaking aspen. I completed a master’s with Ingrid Parker at UC Santa Cruz where I measured invasion impacts and compared management methods for the invasive grass, Ehrharta erecta.

Jolanta is a Latvian student who finished her degree at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology where she was co-supervised by Bente Graae and Rick Strimbeck. She is now a PhD student at the University of Copenhagen.

Kevin is a student at the Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive in Montpellier, France. He is primarily supervised by Cyrille Violle and visits the lab regularly.