I am a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Professor Trinity Hamilton at the University of Minnesota.  My research interests include microbial and invertebrate community ecology of different habitats - cryoconite holes, streams, wetlands, moss, algae, and thixotropic mud, and relating this knowledge to climate change, species interactions, assembly processes, and geomicrobiology.  I conduct glacier ecology research in Alaska, and have conducted research and lived in a Kham Tibetan village in the upper reaches of the Mekong River and at Mt. Gongga, in the temperate monsoonal region of the Tibet Plateau.  My teaching and research interests are interdisciplinary - biology, ecology, and sustainability issues.  

 

I am an advocate of diversity, equity,  accessibility, and inclusion issues and of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK).  Recently, a multilingual team and I conducted a special session at the Ecological Society of America Annual meeting to test the use of AI in providing interpretion and live captions of scientific talks from Spanish, Portuguese, Cantonese, and Mandarin ecologists into English.  We hope that one day students from non-English speaking countries do not have to ask, "Is my English good enough yet to be a scientist?" 

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Are you interested in making your presentations to audiences more inclusive?  Select the automatic subtitles and interpreted subtitles with a real-time interpreting function in PowerPoint.  This will help to support many individuals by providing a visual representation of your talks and discussions.

 

I would especially like to thank the National Science Foundation for supporting me in making my leap from an international corporate career to a career in science.