Zoe Wood
Category:
Title:
Collection & Research Assistant
E-Mail:
zoewood@ucsb.edu
About:
Zoe graduated with a B.A. in Biology and Latin American Studies from Bowdoin College in 2018, where she did a thesis on host-plant preferences of a generalist herbivore insect (Hemiptera: Cercopidae). After studying cicadas, birds, and trees as a naturalist in the Peruvian Amazon and working as an outdoor educator for middle school students in coastal Maine, she landed in Santa Barbara as a research technician in the RIVRLab and Young Lab at UCSB. As a UCSB Natural History Collections Assistant and Art & Science Research Fellow, Zoe is currently working on multiple projects at the intersection of natural history collections, plant and insect phenology, community ecology, and art.
Website:
Seth Frazer
Category:
Title:
Undergraduate Research Assistant
E-Mail:
sethfrazer@umail.ucsb.edu
About:
Seth is a general biology major and he is interested in researching the interactions between different taxa within ecosystems. Currently, he is working on a project that seeks to develop an automated camera trap system that can be used to target specific taxa, and has the possibility of implementing machine learning as a part of this development process.
Charlie Thrift
Category:
Title:
Undergraduate Research Assistant and Student Museum Curator
E-Mail:
charliethrift@gmail.com
About:
Charlie is an undergraduate student at UCSB studying biology and education. Since the fall of 2018 at CCBER, he works mainly with bee specimens, including collection, curation, and identification. Charlie also began a research project during stay-at-home testing the efficacy of identifying bee species and populations based on wing venation alone, using geometric morphometrics. His research interests include bees, ecology, phenology, museum data, and getting as many people excited about bees as possible through education and outreach. He plans to pursue a PhD after graduating from UCSB.
Ann Bishop
Category:
Title:
Seaweed Collection Technician
E-Mail:
bishop@ccber.ucsb.edu
Phone:
(805) 893-2401
About:
Ann Bishop is a marine biologist who received her Masters from Moss Landing Marine Labs in phycology and assisted with the curation of the MLML Research Museum and Herbarium collections. Her research interests include marine ecology, invasive species, and natural resource management. Ann also enjoys outdoor education and interpretation from her time teaching on Catalina Island and working with the park service.
Jorrit Poelen
Category:
Title:
Research Affiliate - Global Biotic Interactions
E-Mail:
jhpoelen@ucsb.edu
About:
Global Biotic Interactions (GloBI) provides open access to finding species interaction data (e.g., predator-prey, pollinator-plant, pathogen-host, parasite-host) by combining existing open datasets using open source software.
Website:
Chris Evelyn
Category:
Title:
Vertebrate Curatorial Manager and UCSB Assistant Researcher
E-Mail:
christopher_evelyn@ucsb.edu
About:
Chris Evelyn is a herpetologist with an interest in the evolution of diversity in amphibians and reptiles. His research to date has focused on speciation, morphological evolution, and ecological patterns across spatial scales from microhabitat to biogeography. Chris is also passionate about outdoor education and conservation from his time teaching environmental education on Santa Catalina Island to current cooperative projects with state and federal agencies. Chris spent 2018 in Mexico studying parapatric speciation in the salamanders of Oaxaca as a UC Mexus Postdoctoral Fellow
Gregory A. Wahlert
Category:
Title:
Shirley Tucker Curator of Biodiversity Collections and Botanical Research, Assistant Researcher
E-Mail:
wahlert@ccber.ucsb.edu
Phone:
(805)-893-2401
About:
Greg is the collection manager for the UCSB Natural History Collections at CCBER. Research pursuits: Flora of California; Arctostaphylos (Ericaceae); Violaceae; Malvaceae; Flora of Madagascar
Katja Seltmann
Category:
Title:
Katherine Esau Director, Invertebrate Zoology Curator, UCSB Associate Researcher
E-Mail:
seltmann@ccber.ucsb.edu
Phone:
(805) 893-2401
About:
As Director of the Cheadle Center for Biodiversity and Ecological Restoration (CCBER), I direct our three main research and programmatic areas — collections management, education, and restoration. The integration of these activities support the overall campus mission and provide unique opportunities for faculty, staff, students, and community members to explore, learn, and be inspired by our collections and campus natural areas. CCBER promotes the teaching of diverse undergraduate and graduate courses in EEMB, Environmental Studies, and Geology. It also supports faculty, staff, and student research interests by providing field, collection and lab-based resources. CCBER houses regionally focused collections of insects, terrestrial plants, algae, and vertebrates, as well as an extensive plant anatomy collection. The Center satisfies the University's obligation to provide stewardship of campus lands, rich in biodiversity. Through the ecological restoration program, the Center encourages land restoration on and near campus. The Kids in Nature outreach program fulfills K-12 educational goals, while staff and faculty curators provide scientific information and advice to private entities. My own research agenda is in the field of biodiversity informatics, or data science research of digitized natural history collection records, entomology (particularly Hymenoptera), and media arts.
Website:
