I am a first-year PhD student interested in ecosystem services and the interdependent ecologies of environmental and human health. I graduated with a dual Bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Zoology and Global Health. At UW, I had the pleasure to conduct research on a myriad of planetary health topics, including plant community ecology and the social determinants of maternal health. Outside of graduate school, I love to draw comics, rock climb, bike, kayak, and trail run. 

Hi! My name is Cas; I’m currently a graduate student at ESF. For the last two years, I’ve worked as a fisheries technician on Onondaga Lake under Dr. Drew. I’m super interested in Lake Sturgeon and their life history, and very excited to be pursuing an independent research project this semester focusing on sturgeon population and movement within Onondaga Lake.

I earned my B.S. in Environmental Biology from SUNY ESF and have returned as a master's student working with Dr. Joshua Drew. My research focuses on the shark-toothed weapons used by Indigenous communities in Fiji. I plan to use these cultural artifacts to reconstruct historical ecological patterns of shark populations in the region. By analyzing the weapons, I aim to create an ecological timeline of Fiji's sharks and explore how marine ecosystems have changed over time. I hope this research will provide insights not only into marine ecology but also into the long-standing relationships between people and marine environments from a historical perspective.

Leah Davis Rubin is a Ph.D. student at The State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Dr. Joshua Drew's Coupled Human and Organismal Systems lab and a visiting student in the Paleo-FISHES Lab. As a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, Leah is a dedicated human ecologist investigating the complex relationships between humans and marine environments through time. Her research utilizes dermal denticles from deep sea sediment cores and coral reefs, zooarchaeological remains, and oral histories to examine the impacts of tourism and colonization on fisheries and the role of subsistence fishing in food sovereignty and security. With experience in marine mammal stranding response, natural history collections management, and high school science education, Leah is also passionate about mentoring, working with undergraduates and high school students to foster curiosity, develop innovative projects, and explore historical perspectives. When Leah isn't in the lab, you can probably find her somewhere in Maine, swimming, fishing, and ideally eating blueberries

Mia Glover is a PhD candidate in Environmental Biology at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and a Sloan Scholar in the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. Her dissertation, Blue Carbon, Governance, and Colonial Ecologies in Coastal Fiji, examines how colonial legacies and contemporary customary governance shape the distribution of carbon-rich mangrove and seagrass ecosystems and their alignment with food sovereignty and climate resilience in coastal Fiji.

Mia uses drone-based photogrammetry, hierarchical joint species distribution models, and participatory mapping with Indigenous communities to assess blue carbon dynamics and to advance approaches for Indigenous data sovereignty. Her research spans ecological monitoring, spatial modeling, and socio-cultural analysis to better understand the links between marine ecosystems, food sovereignty, and climate adaptation.

In addition to her fieldwork in Fiji, Mia is a research assistant for the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. For the Center, she leads projects that include water-chemistry analyses to establish baseline conditions amid ongoing development pressures on the Onondaga and Tonawanda Seneca Nations, as well as a data-sovereignty initiative to create partnership protocols for collaborations with Indigenous Nations. Through these partnerships, she works to connect Indigenous nations across regions, fostering knowledge exchange and contributing to a more globally unified approach to coastal stewardship and climate resilience.

I am a PhD student studying freshwater fish in New York State.  I am interested in examining how New York's fish communities have changed over the last century, and what factors have driven those changes from urban sites like Onondaga Lake in Syracuse to more remote lakes like Cranberry Lake in the Adirondack Park.  Alongside these fish communities, I study how the human community interacts with these lakes from an ecosystem services perspective, and how changes in the species present may influence those interactions.