Graduate Student Accomplishments
Fall 2023 Graduate Kudos
Mary Knipper was awarded a 2023 Fulbright-Hays DDRA Fellowship for her dissertation fieldwork in Lesotho.
Stephen Meriki was awarded a CHES-Zelnick grant and a grant from the Center for African Studies for 2023 summertime preliminary research in Kenya.
Andrew Schwartz presented a poster at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Annual meeting titled, "Investigating Niche Overlap in Two Sympatric Phenacodonts using Dental Microwear Texture Analysis."
Denise Mercado was first author of a commentary published in the journal Religion, Brain, and Behavior.
Denise received funding from the National Science Foundation to conduct fieldwork in Vanuatu.
She was a co-author of an article published in the journal, Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology.
Eva Hernandez Janer presented her Tuanan research titled, “Assessing the Impacts of Ecological Disturbances on Wild Orangutans through Stable Isotopes,” at the American Museum of Natural History 14th annual Student Conference on Conservation Science in New York City.
William Aguado was invited to present a lecture to Fulbright/AMINEF Commission in Jakarta: "Plant Secondary Metabolites, Diet, and Physiology in Wild Bornean Orangutans." (June 2023)
Awarded 3rd Place Best Presentation—Congress of the Entomological Society of Indonesia, Padang, Indonesia for talk: " Documenting and exploring the role of insects in the diet and nutrition of Bornean orangutans. (September 2023)
Invited to present talk for symposium: "Will’s Journey in Tuanan" for symposium celebrating 20 years of research at Tuanan, Universitas Palangka Raya, Indonesia. (November 2023)
William Aguado and Eva Hernandez Janer received the Fulbright Host Engagement Award —Fulbright/AMINEF ($5,600) to hold/teach biology field-methods course called "Biological Field Methods at Tuanan" taught in June, for ten Indonesian undergrad students from 2 universities, an NGO, and government forestry staff.
Natalie Robinson presented a talk at the Student Conference on Conservation Science, New York. October 6, 2023, “Do informative social media captions impact perceptions of human-primate interactions?”
She was co-author on a publication in Conservation Biology , Freund, CA, Cronin, KA, Huang, M, Robinson, NJ, Yoo, B, & DiGiorgio, AL. (2023), titled “Effects of captions on viewers’ perceptions of images depicting human-primate interaction.”. https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.14199
Clive Echague Presented the paper "The "Migratory Crisis in Chile: Insecurity, Border Anxiety and the Authority Restoration.” In the Platform for Dialogue: Rethinking the "Crises" in South American Migration Dynamics, organized by the Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (CALAS), Quito, Ecuador, December 2023.
Charles Maingi July 4th – 1st August 2023: Teaching Assistant for the Primate Wildlife Ecology & Conservation (PWEC) Field school 2023 held in Kenya.
September 1st, 2023: Participated and among the organizers of the National Event to mark the International Primates Day (IPD) 2023 in Lower Tana River, Kenya.
November 1st, 2023: Invited to give a PowerPoint presentation by Rutgers University for Primate Conservation (RUPC) student organization at Douglas Student Center. The presentation title was Primates, People & One Habitat: A Glimpse into Primate Conservation in Lower Tana River, Kenya.
Spring 2021 Graduate Kudos
Defenses:
Alex Pritchard: Successfully defended his dissertation titled "Variation of stress coping in a socially complex primate” on March 2, 2021.
Awards, Grants, Presentations Posters and Papers:
Eva Mann: Received honorable mention for the Ford Foundation Pre-doctoral fellowship award.
Rebecca DeCamp: Presented a talk at the 2021 American Association of Physical Anthropologists entitled, "Lemurs Smell Better than Catarrhines" (April 19) and recently was awarded the Bigel ($2,600) towards the sequencing of a mandrill genome.
Ankita Chandranath: Received a travel grant from SASP and have received a Bigel award from our department for her summer project.
Charles Maingi: Published a paper entitled: “Anthropogenic activities and influence of behavior of the Tana River mangabey (Cercocebus galeritus) in two forest fragments in Lower Tana River, Kenya.” Afr. Prim.
Rupesh Gawde: Published in the journal Human Dimensions of Wildlife titled "To kill or not to kill?: factors related to people’s support of lethal and non-lethal strategies for managing monkeys in India” and his second publication in the South Asian Journal of Experimental Biology titled "Are ants always mutualistic? Influence of ants and variation in flower-ets of Clerodendrum chinense".
Joyce Lu: Was awarded $1,498 from the Center for Latin American Studies Small Grant Fund to fund summer research and K’iche’ Maya language training for her dissertation project on antimicrobial resistance and health stewardship in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.
Reecha Das: Received a fellowship from AIIS and has also received a Wenner Gren for her fieldwork.
Fulya Pinar: Received a fellowship from the Center for Cultural Analysis for next academic year and also received a fellowship from the Institute for Research on Women.
Denise Mercado: Is the co-author of a forthcoming publication entitled: “A solidarity-type world”: Need-based helping among ranchers in the southwestern United States. Human Nature.
Rebecca Brittain: Was awarded an SGS Louis Bevier Fellowship for the upcoming academic year and have also received an NSF DDRIG Grant focusing on her research on energetics contributions of the gut microbiome in wild orangutans and she has a publication in press in Scientific Reports focusing on seasonal muscle catabolism in wild orangutans.
Will Aguado: Received $5,000 from the Lewis and Clark fund which was given through the American Philosophical Society. He also received $5,000 from Orangutan Species Survival Plan for “The influence of plant secondary metabolites on diet selection, nutrition and health of wild Bornean orangutans.” And was awarded $4,000 from the Global Wildlife Conservation's Primate Action Fund: Plant Secondary Metabolites, Nutrients, and Physiology in Wild Bornean Orangutans at Tuanan, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia.” In addition to this, he presented a talk at AAPA titled “A staple food resource, Leucomphalos callicarpus, may temper fluctuating fruit availability for Bornean orangutans at Tuanan, Indonesia” and has received a Fulbright and Fulbright Language Training for January 2022.
Dominique Raboin: Published two papers entitled: “High levels of infant handling by adult males in Rwenzori Angolan colobus (Colobus angolensis ruwenzorii) compared to two closely related species, C. guereza and C. vellerosus.” Primates. and the second paper entitled “Genetic population structure of endangered ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) from nine sites in southern Madagascar.” Ecology and Evolution.
Raul Rodrigues: As part of his academic development, is the Founder of the Latin American Workshop on Informal Economy. University of Buenos Aires, Argentina; University IBEROAMERICA, Mexico; University Mayor de San Andres, Bolivia. He also received an award from the Center for Latin American Studies and was an invited speaker for the "New Indigeneities in the Bolivian socialism of the twenty-first Century.” Washington and Lee University, Course: “Race and Racism in the Americas.”.
Gabrielle Cabrera: Was awarded an NSF for her dissertation fieldwork and has also made three presentations while doing fieldwork in the Central Valley of California. The presentations are: We Are Not Dreamers Book Panel. UCSC Resource Centers & Undocumented Student Services. University of California, Santa Cruz. 2) Unidos: Empowering Undocumented Student Success. University of California, Merced. and 3) We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorizing Undocumented Life. Immigration Initiative at Harvard University.
Andres Gonzalez: Was awarded $1,200 from the Center for Latin American Studies small grant fund and he also published an article, co-authored a book chapter and co-edited a volume on transnational organized crime.
Dawn Wells: Received a Graduate Assistantship from the School of Graduate Studies GradFund for Academic Year 2021-2022.
Alex Pritchard: Got a postdoc in Nina Fefferman’s lab at the University of Tennessee.
Special Recognition for Emma and Becca DeCamp by Susan Cachel: Quote “Emma and Becca were my T.A.s in Intro to Human Evolution. They devised remote lab exercises for the course using material on the Smithsonian Institution's Human Origins Website. Briana Pobinar (Smithsonian Education Department) invited them to submit their lab exercises for inclusion on the Human Origins Website.”
Alumni Placements, follow-ups:
Spring/Fall 2020 Kudos
Graduate Program in Anthropology
Kudos - Spring/Fall 2020
