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

Elizabeth Austin

Undergraduate Researcher, Middlebury College

Elizabeth (’24) studies Environmental Science and Earth & Climate Science at Middlebury College. She is from Memphis, TN, and enjoys playing rugby, cooking, crafts, and getting outside.

Elizabeth is currently working on data from packrat middens in Southern California and participated in an international literature review about conservation paleobiology. She was recently a summer intern at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History through the lab’s NSF furbearing mammals project.

Lauren Gemery

Undergraduate Researcher, Middlebury College & Bristol Conservation Commission

Lauren (’23) is a Conservation Biology major at Middlebury College. She is from Norwich, VT, and enjoys exploring swimming holes, playing frisbee, teaching ceramics, and farming at the Knoll.

Lauren is currently working with Carolyn Dash and the Bristol Conservation Commission to research existing local wildlife data, develop tracking methods, and draft community outreach for the town of Bristol, VT.

Anna Krouse

Undergraduate Researcher, Middlebury College

Anna (25.5) is an Earth and Climate Science Major at Middlebury College. She is from Shaker Heights, Ohio and spends her free time rock climbing, playing ultimate frisbee and skiing.

Anna is very interested in sediment and ice cores and what they tell us about past climates. This summer, she will be part of a team taking a sediment core from a lake in Northeastern Vermont and plans to analyze the core’s contents. Currently, she is preparing for this by researching Vermont’s sediment core history.

Amanda Manoogian

Undergraduate Researcher, Middlebury College

Amanda (‘23.5) is an Environmental Studies-Earth and Climate Science joint major with a minor in English. She is from Washington, DC, and she enjoys yoga, skiing, reading, and drawing in her free time. Amanda is currently working on her senior thesis, analyzing sediments from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, CA.

Olivia Olson

NSF Post-baccalaureate Researcher, Middlebury College

Olivia (‘21.5) studied Biology and German at Middlebury College. She enjoys writing songs and has published several short stories in student-led art journals. She is from Islesboro, Maine.

Olivia wrote her thesis on the sea mink using morphology and local ecological knowledge of Mai. She is continuing this research as a post-bac researcher/ lab tech in the HEDGE lab!

Lucia Snyderman

Undergraduate Researcher, Middlebury College

Lucia (‘23.5) is majoring in Biology with a minor in Italian. She is from Pittsburgh, PA and in her free time enjoys hiking, playing tennis, reading, and writing poems. Lucia is thrilled to join the HEDGE lab, gain some fossil fieldwork experience, and learn more about Maine seabirds like the Great Auk during the Holocene!

Luke Van Horn

Undergraduate Researcher, Middlebury College

Luke (’24) is a Biology Major at Middlebury College from Brooklyn, NY. He likes to do woodworking and bushcraft, as well as play rugby and jiu-jitsu. He is researching Vermont wildlife around Middlebury College.

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.

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.

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 beavers in Vermont. She is now a graduate student at Stanford University in Anthropology.

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.

Sylvie Lyu (’24) English

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

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.

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.