Angela Fuller, PhD

I am the Leader of the USGS New York Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit and a Professor (courtesy) in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at Cornell University. The single unifying theme of the research in our lab that transcends all projects is that they provide information that contributes to the conservation or management of wildlife species and influences the way species are managed. You can read about research in our lab on the home page and in more detail on the research page. Read about our amazing students and postdocs that make it all possible on this page.

Current Lab Members

Robert Márquez, Ph.D. Candidate

Email: rjm489@cornell.edu

Robert Márquez has over 15 years of experience working with the Andean Bear Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). He is currently the project manager for the Andean Bear Conservation Alliance initiative and coordinator of the WCS Colombia Andean Bear Project. He has been involved in Andean bear research and conservation projects in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Robert is interested in facilitating management decision-making by generating information on Andean bear status and threats, as well as generating tools to monitor Andean bear populations and manage interactions between Andean bears and people.

Santiago García Lloré, Ph.D. Candidate

Email: sag337@cornell.edu

Prior to Cornell, Santiago García was the Coordinator for Ecuador and Peru “All eyes on the Amazon Program”, a project led by Hivos and takes place in three countries in South America. Prior to that position, he was the National Forestry Director of the Ministry of the Environment in Ecuador. He holds an MSc in Conservation Leadership from Colorado State University (Human Dimensions of Natural Resources Department). His main areas of interest are focusing on sustainable forest management, deforestation & land conversion, human-wildlife conflicts and climate change. In 2015, as part of his thesis, he led research to evaluate the relationship between human and wildlife activities in two rural Kenyan communities: Meibae and Salama. Santiago has 14 years of experience working with local and indigenous communities in South America. Santiago is currently working on spatial risk mapping in Ecuador as a tool to plan and implement human-Andean bear conflict mitigation measures. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emJow2_2Si4

Shashank Poudel, Ph.D. Candidate

Email: sp2489@cornell.edu

Shashank completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in Development Studies from Kathmandu University (2009) and a M.S degree in Environmental Science from Tongji University (2012). He worked as a Networking Officer for BBC Media Action and as a Conservation Officer for National Trust for Nature Conservation. Shashank’s PhD research focuses on human-leopard conflict in Nepal.

Jennifer Grauer, Ph.D. Candidate

Email: jag479@cornell.edu

Jen is broadly interested in community and population dynamics and how disentangling the facets of complex systems can help inform species management and conservation. Before starting at Cornell, Jen worked as a Wildlife Biologist and Federal Aid Administrator for the Nebraska Game & Parks Commission, and has studied a variety of taxa across the US. She earned a MS degree in Wildlife Ecology from the University of Wisconsin- Madison, where she studied the reintroduction and status of endangered American martens in Wisconsin, and bachelors degrees from the University of Vermont. Her research at Cornell focuses on the role of parasitic threats in limiting the population growth of moose in New York.

Trishna Rayamajhi, M.S. Student

Trishna is a graduate of Kathmandu Forestry College. Her professional career started in 2014 as a researcher in the Federation of Community Forestry User Groups of Nepal (FECOFUN). Since 2016, she has been working as a Natural resource Conservation Assistant in the National Trust for Nature Conservation-Biodiversity Conservation Center (NTNC-BCC) in Chitwan National Park. Her vision is to support conservation through the application of genetics.

Rebecca Wooldridge, Ph.D Student

Becky’s overarching interests are in the development of statistical models for addressing enduring challenges in applied ecology and wildlife management. She gained an undergraduate degree in Zoology from the University of Leeds, UK (2016). Following this, she spent several years working as a conservation scientist for Panthera researching neotropical mammal populations, with a focus on carnivores. Her interests in quantitative ecology grew out of her experience working with varied datasets at Panthera. She gained an MSc in Statistical Ecology from the University of St Andrews, UK (2021). Her research at Cornell focuses on evaluating the effects of harvest on fisher populations using decision-science, spatial capture-recapture, occupancy and population modelling.

Haley Turner, M.S. Student

Haley completed her undergraduate degree at George Mason University in northern Virginia. During her undergraduate studies, she worked for the U.S. Geological survey (USGS) studying eastern box turtles at Patuxent Wildlife Research Center. After graduating with a B.S. in Environmental Science, she moved to southern Florida to research sea turtles, diamondback terrapins, and Burmese pythons with the USGS. Her current research at Cornell University focuses on the density of bobcat populations in New York State. Haley is broadly interested in population and landscape ecology, and how the combination of the two can lead to better methods of understanding population dynamics.

Dr. Joshua Twining, Postdoctoral Scientist

Josh started out by getting his undergraduate degree at the University of Birmingham (2013). Following this he spent several years working on research projects in Indonesia and Malaysia and completed his Masters by Research at Imperial College London (2015). After this he worked for the People’s Trust of Endangered Species prior to commencing his PhD at Queen’s University, Belfast (QUB). His PhD research focused on the recovery of the European pine marten in Ireland, and the importance of integrating both direct and indirect interactions between species and their environments in modelling community dynamics and predicting system outcomes in real world landscapes. He continued to work with citizen scientists to conduct non-invasive landscape scale multi-species monitoring for his first postdoc, which used multi-species occupancy models to examine how habitat mediates predator-prey interactions. In his current role he is designing and coordinating a NY state-wide survey for mammals. This work aims to use machine learning and occupancy modelling to inform evidence-based management and conservation of wildlife species.

Kelly Perkins, Research Support Specialist

Kelly provides general research support for the NY Coop Unit since July 2016. Prior to this she worked as a zoologist for the New York Natural Heritage Program conducting surveys, managing data, and studying rare species in New York state. She attended the University of Delaware (B.S. wildlife conservation ’02) and West Virginia University (M.S. wildlife resources ’06). She also spent time as a seasonal technician for several research and government institutions studying birds and other wildlife. She has a background in ornithology, bat biology and acoustics, and wildlife inventory and habitat associations spanning many taxa. Her interests include wildlife research, data manipulation, and statistics.