About

I grew up in the mountains of Colorado and have always appreciated being outdoors. I earned my BSc in Zoology from Colorado State University in 2005, MSc in Science Education from Montana State University in 2009, MSc in Zoology from the University of Wyoming in 2020, and a PhD in Ecology and Evolution at UW in 2024. I am now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wyoming working with Ellen Aikens in the School of Computing. Before starting my second masters, I worked on a variety of research projects in Colorado including a black bear study investigating the influence of human development on bear behavior and fitness and projects evaluating factors associated with survival of neonatal mule deer and elk. While at UW, I assisted with adult mule deer, elk, and bighorn sheep captures as well as trapping mountain lions. My current research at the University of Wyoming will leverage a unique long-term dataset of black bears to investigate the connection between spatial learning, emergent movement patterns, fitness, and range expansion across a wildland-urban gradient. The project leverages two environmental perturbations: a natural food failure event and a controlled experiment manipulating trash resources, which provide a unique opportunity to test competing hypotheses about how resource dynamics shape which spatial learning strategies may be favored in urban and natural settings. Pairing animal tracking data, survival rates, and reproductive success from 81 individuals monitored for up to six years, with innovative analytical approaches, this research will uncover fundamental rules governing how individual-level cognitive traits and environmental change interact to produce emergent population-level patterns of distribution and persistence across altered landscapes, and will allow managers to better understand how and when human-animal conflict is likely to occur. I not only want to conduct relevant science but develop programming the increases participation and representation in science. I am passionate about creating programming that will help undergraduate students build field skills, enhance field education, and increase undergraduate research opportunities. Other than wildlife research, I enjoy rafting, mountain biking, split-boarding, surfing, fly fishing, gardening, cooking, and international travel!