Isabel Del Toro Mijares
Bio: I am from Mexico. I recently graduated from Yale (2020) with a degree in Environmental Studies. As an undergraduate student, I formed part of the Jetz Lab as a research assistant, and was excited to join the team full time as a PGA after graduating. I enjoy hiking, spending time with my dog, and drawing.
Research Interests: I am interested in understanding how ecosystems respond to anthropogenic climate change, and how this impacts their role in the carbon system and ability to provide ecosystem services. Within this broad theme, I am especially interested in plant ecology and how an ecosystem’s vegetation recovers from disturbance events such as severe fires and land use intensification. For my senior undergraduate thesis, I studied how savanna grasses were responding to changing CO2 concentrations. In the future, I hope to continue exploring plant ecology and anthropogenic change in dry tropical landscapes, specifically those of my home country, Mexico. In addition to my research interests, I am interested in scientific communication and using environmental science towards questions of justice and equity.
At BGC: I am a part of the Map of Life data team. I help clean and standardize datasets for ingestion into our platforms, and for species distribution modelling projects in the greater lab.
Future plans: I hope to pursue graduate school in ecology or environmental science around the themes I am interested in (above) and am hoping to learn more about applying remote sensing methods and artificial intelligence towards environmental science.
Robert Anderson
Bio: I’ve been working as part of the BGC as a Postgraduate Associate with the Map of Life for just over a year. I finished a degree in Environmental Science from Northeastern University in the Spring of 2019, and before joining the lab at Yale last January, I held jobs as a shorebird technician and beekeeper in Massachusetts. When I have free time, I enjoy cooking and listening to music. However, it is more likely you will find me on a hiking trail where I will be far too distracted by the cool bird I just saw to notice you.
Research Interests: Generally, my interests in science revolve around the connections that exist in ecosystems, with particular interest in species interactions. I am fascinated by how connected everything in the world is, and how it is impossible to make a change in one part of an ecosystem without considering what impact that will have on all other aspects of the system. I am also interested in the concept of how to properly value land and space, and am hoping to start a career in conservation prioritization where I can incorporate considerations of the effect species interactions have on ecosystem functioning into decision-making methods.
At BGC: In my current position with the Map of Life in the BGC, I am primarily focused on curating global biodiversity datasets (mostly working on range maps). This has provided me with a valuable experience to more completely understand where biodiversity information comes from, and how it is used by scientists and conservation practitioners. Over the summer, I was part of a large team effort to mobilize all of our datasets to the new MoL database, which gave me the opportunity to work directly with various data types from a huge range of taxa.
Future Plans: Currently, I am applying to master’s programs, where I hope to continue my path towards a career in conservation prioritization by doing research on how species interactions impact ecosystem functions.
Jessica “Griffy” Vigneron
Bio: During my undergraduate degree, I majored in both biology and psychology; I was part of various research teams and project, from looking at anti-predation behaviour in house sparrows, the effect of natural gas and oil infrastructure on prairie songbirds, to looking at anxiety and conflict mitigation in captive baboons in Singapore. In one of my final undergraduate projects, I collected data on freshwater streams from YSI and Lamotte sensors and used multivariate linear regression in R to predict water quality based on nearby land-use. As a fun aside, I love elephants, and attended a course on Asian Elephant Health, Reproduction, and Management in Sri Lanka during my undergraduate degree.
At BGC: I am part of the Map of Life team and have primarily been involved with the digitization and mobilization of mammal data using ArcGIS and R scripting. Additionally, I am involved with the quality control, preparation, and mobilization of local inventories for Map of Life.
Research Interests and Future Plans: I have a strong interest in human-wildlife conflict mitigation and management, as well as animal behaviour and cognition, and species distribution modelling. Eventually, I hope to combine my experience in psychology with my interests in ecology, and am currently applying for related graduate programs. In my spare time I do a lot of wildlife and landscape paintings and I volunteer with Yale CHATogether, a group that studies cultural barriers and advocates for mental wellness in Asian and Asian Americans in North America.
Kalkidan Fekadu
Interest, Bio, and Research: I am from Ethiopia. I earned my bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from NYU Shanghai in 2019. After graduation, I worked as a software engineer at an AI company in Ethiopia. My research interest focuses on remote sensing and machine learning, particularly applying machine learning techniques to analyze satellite images.
At BGC: I work in the informatics team at Map of Life.
Future Plans: I want to work in the agricultural and environmental studies field in Ethiopia as a computer scientist. During my time at Yale BGC Center, I hope to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge for making meaningful contributions to these fields.
Maisha Lucas
Bio: I graduated from the University of Georgia in 2019 with a degree in Ecology and a minor in Entomology. During my undergraduate career, I interned in the Arthropod collection at the Georgia Museum of Natural History. Since graduating, I have been able to assist in Insect Ecology labs at the University of California Riverside and Purdue University. In my free time, I like to hike, collect insects, watch movies, and take care of my six Black Beauty stick insect children.
At BGC: I am a part of the Taxon Expert group where I assist in managing taxonomy data sets that will be used to map species occurrences. My responsibilities include cleaning data sets and entering trait data accumulated from various sources.
Future Plans: I hope to continue to assist in and potentially carry out my own ecological research. I also hope to become proficient in programming and data analysis software, such as R, Python, and ArcGIS.
