People

Alexis M. Mychajliw

Principal Investigator

Alexis is an Assistant Professor of Biology & Environmental Studies at Middlebury College. She is also a Research Associate at the La Brea Tar Pits, part of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and a Research Associate at the National Museum of Natural History, part of the Smithsonian Institution. She received her BS from Cornell University in 2012 and PhD from Stanford University in 2017. She was formerly a postdoctoral researcher at Hokkaido University in Japan and the University of Oklahoma. Her research is at the intersection of conservation biology, paleontology, and ecology. Learn more about her here.

Email: amychajliw[@]middlebury.edu, CV: click here for a copy of her CV

Max Chalfin-Jacobs

Natural History Collections Intern, Middlebury College

Max (’25) is a Conservation Biology major from Newton, Massachusetts. He is an avid birder and photographer, loves to play ultimate frisbee and soccer, and has been struggling to learn guitar for the past year. Max has previously worked with piping plovers in Nantucket, MA, seabirds in the subantarctic, and golden-shouldered parrots in Cape York, Australia. He is working with the Middlebury College bird collection studying the formation of an Anthropocene bird assemblage in Vermont through an analysis on historic shifts in avian populations and ecosystems.

Claire Ellerbrook

Undergraduate Researcher, Middlebury College

Claire (’26) is a biology major with minors in Environmental Studies and Spanish. She is from Seattle, WA and loves hiking, backpacking, skiing, and music, and she is always looking to learn a new fun fact. She is working on various projects in the field of mammalian genomics, including investigating the demographic history Hispaniolan solenodons, analyzing canid genomes with zoonotic disease lens, and researching American marten reintroduction dynamics.

Alivia Hartz

Undergraduate Researcher, Middlebury College & Crown Point State Historic Site

Alivia (’26) is a Biology-Earth and Climate Sciences joint major with a minor in Classics. She is from Nashville, TN, and loves to read, ski, and hike. Outside of academics, she is co-captain of the equestrian team and an advising fellow for Matriculate. She is working on a thesis about the impacts of past global climate change on a Late Ordovician reef from Crown Point, NY, as well as assisting on our NSF Fur Trade project.

Samuel Medina

Undergraduate Researcher, Middlebury College

Samuel (25′) is a Conservation Biology Major with a Minor in music. Born and Raised in East Los Angeles, Samuel is interested in exploring human-wildlife interaction and conflict. Samuel Is currently working with the Ripton Conservation Commission to establish a community camera-trapping project aimed at creating positive human-wildlife interactions.

Noel Schlageter

Undergraduate Researcher, Middlebury College & Vermont Biomedical Research Network

Noel (‘26.5) is a Biology-Earth and Climate Sciences joint major from Winhall, Vermont. He has previously worked as an ecological surveyor at the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, and is currently developing habitat distribution models for the tapeworm Echinococcus multilocularis and for several of its canid hosts. Noel loves the woods, and is a biology student foremost out of a love for nature and a desire to help build community resilience and ecological literacy.

Lily Weissman

Undergraduate Researcher, Middlebury College & The Nature Conservancy

Lily (‘27) is a joint Earth and Climate Science and Biology major from Saint Paul, Minnesota. She loves spending time outside backpacking, climbing, skiing, cycling, and leading trips for Middlebury Mountain Club. Currently, she is working on a project with The Nature Conservancy, building species distribution models to better understand how blue oak tree habitat is shifting in California due to climate change.

Max Zeltsar

Postbaccalaureate Research Technician, Middlebury College & Shoals Marine Laboratory

Max graduated in 2024.5 with a degree in Conservation Biology. He has previously researched introduced muskrat populations on the Isles of Shoals and human-carnivore conflict in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania. He is from Boxford, MA, and loves wildlife photography, cooking, backpacking, and skiing.

Ariel Zhang

Undergraduate Researcher, Middlebury College & Shoals Marine Laboratory

Ariel (’26) is a Conservation Biology major with a Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies minor from Johns Creek, GA. With the HEDGE lab, she’s working on cataloging and updating the Middlebury College Vertebrate Collections. She will spend the summer working on the Isles of Shoals muskrat population. She also enjoys photography, sailing, traveling, and spending time with her cat.

Gus

Lab Mascot

Gus is a blind African pygmy hedgehog. His interests include mealworms, bananas, and running on his wheel. Gus does not have an email address or CV.

You?

Drew An-Pham (’23) Environmental Studies – Geography

Drew developed maps for HEDGE lab research projects. He now works for AAAS (Science) in data visualization.

Elizabeth Austin (’24) – Environmental Studies – Earth & Climate Science

Elizabeth interned at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History through the lab’s NSF furbearing mammals project. Elizabeth worked on data from packrat middens across Southern California and wrote her Senior Thesis about the taphonomy of a possible packrat midden within La Brea Tar Pits. She is now a PhD student at UT Austin.

Jack Cornish (’22) Environmental Studies – Biology

Jack studied beaver populations on college owned land and assessed potential impacts to human structures and activities that the beavers may pose.

Ezra Flint (’22) Environmental Studies – Geology

Ezra wrote a thesis about the sediments at the La Brea Tar Pits and other tar pits worldwide.

Lauren Gemrey (’23) Environmental Studies – Biology

Lauren worked with Carolyn Dash and the Bristol Conservation Commission to research existing local wildlife data and draft community science plans for the town of Bristol, VT.

David Goldsmith (‘23.5) Environmental Studies – Biology

David worked with the Bristol Conservation Commission to research the wildlife of Bristol Parks.

Valentina Hogenhuis (‘22.5) Environmental Policy

Valentina worked with the Fairbanks Museum to digitize, analyze, and interpret their collection of over 700 first bloom and fruit dates for wildflowers.

Audrey Hsi (’22) Biology-Anthropology

Audrey studied archaeological and modern beaver populations in Vermont while at Middlebury. She is now a graduate student at Stanford University in the Earth System Sciences Department studying small mammals.

Anna Krouse (‘25.5) Earth & Climate Sciences

Anna is an Earth and Climate Science Major at Middlebury College. She was part of a team taking a sediment core from a lake in Northeastern Vermont.

Ellie Kroger (’23) Environmental Studies – Biology

Ellie majored in Conservation Biology and studied coral nursery environmental monitoring techniques in Tobago as a cross-cultural community engagement intern.

Arthur Lyu (’24) English

Arthur organized the bird natural history collection and led efforts to digitize our specimens and examine them for arsenic using XRF.

Amanda Manoogian (‘23.5) Environmental Studies – Earth & Climate Science

Amanda wrote her senior thesis about sediments from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, CA, and developed a sediment core analysis protocol for a Vermont lake core.

Jess Mulder (‘22.5) Biology

Jess studied the campus beavers and human-beaver coexistence with the Middlebury Area Land Trust (MALT) and other local landowners.

Andrew Ng (’22) Biology & Economics

Andrew developed a camera trapping and drone protocol for beaver monitoring and helped install a Beaver Deceiver device for the campus storm drain pond.

Emma Norton (’22) Molecular Biology & Biochemistry

Emma studied environmental DNA from soils in comparison with camera trap images of mammals.

Olivia Olson (‘21.5) Biology & German

Olivia studied Biology and German at Middlebury College and upon graduation, was an NSF Post-baccalaureate Researcher. Olivia wrote her thesis on the sea mink using morphology and local ecological knowledge of Maine. She is now a graduate student at the University of Maine.

Oliver Patrick (’24) – Environmental Studies – Biology

Oliver investigated how the Middlebury College bird collection’s species composition reflects 1880s-era bird diversity as well as the origin of rare species within the collection.

Lucy Pollitt (’26) – Earth & Climate Science

Lucy (’26) worked on a database of megafaunal mammal fossils from northeastern North America to re-evaluate extinction timing at the end of the Pleistocene.

Lucia Snyderman (‘23.5) – Biology

Lucia graduated in ‘23.5 with a Biology major. She researched the extinction dynamics of the Great Auk in Maine for her senior thesis and assisted our NSF Fur Trade project. She is now a PhD student at the University of Reading.

Steil (’24) Environmental Studies – Biology

Museum Collections Intern, Middlebury College

Steil (’24) organized the fossil collections at Middlebury College and developed education and outreach material for the Crown Point Historic Site.

Maggie Swanson (‘22.5) Environmental Studies – Biology

Maggie assisted in compiling extinctions that have taken place on island systems throughout the world during the Holocene. She was an intern with the Environmental Research Institute Charlotteville.