Arthouse Studio
Arthouse Studio
Dr. Elie Gurarie is a professor of quantitative wildlife ecology in the Department of Environmental Biology at SUNY - College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Dr. Gurarie develops novel approaches to understanding complex ecological processes, with a particular interest in animal movements, behaviors, space-use, cognition and links to populations and demography. After extensive field experience studying marine mammals in the North Pacific and wolves in Finland (and dabbling in dozens of other systems), it is now the Fate of the Caribou that keeps him up at night.
Gurarie Lab
Mark is a Professor in Large Mammal Ecology in the Wildlife Biology Program in the University of Montana where he has served since 2006. Mark and his students in the Ungulate Ecology Lab have conducted research on large carnivores and their large herbivore prey since 1994 across Canada, Europe, and Asia. Mark obtained his Bachelor’s of Science in 1995 from the University of Guelph, his Masters in 2000 at the University of Montana, and his PhD in 2006 in Ecology at the University of Alberta.
Hebblewhite Lab
After university in the UK and Ireland, Anne came to Canada to work in the Arctic – a dream realized in the 1970s. She eventually settled down with the Government of the NWT (1979-2006) as the regional biologist in the central Arctic and then the Caribou Biologist based in Yellowknife. Then by 2006, Anne continued with caribou but for aboriginal co-management boards and councils including the Wek’èezhìi Renewable Resource Board and Kivalliq Inuit Association.
CARMA
Scott Goetz, Professor at Northern Arizona University, has conducted satellite remote sensing research over the past 30+ years and served on working groups for the IPCC, UN programs on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD), the US Global Change Research Program, the US National Academy of Sciences, and interagency programs on carbon cycle science, climate change and terrestrial ecology. He is Science Lead of NASA’s Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment and Deputy principal investigator of NASA’s Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation.
Goetz Lab
Dr. Logan Berner is a global change ecologist from Alaska who studies the interplay between terrestrial ecosystems and climate. His research primarily focuses on how northern forest and tundra ecosystems respond to climate warming as assessed using long-term satellite observations, field measurements, and ecological informatics.
Logan's website
Bill Fagan is a Distinguished University Professor in the Biology Department at the University of Maryland. He received an Honors B.A. from the University of Delaware (1992), a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Washington (1996), and was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis. His research, which emphasizes the interplay between data and theory, sits at the interface of mathematics and biology, where he has worked on a wide range of topics with many collaborators from diverse fields.
Fagan Lab
Dr. Ophélie Couriot was a post-doc at SUNY-ESF and is now an assistant professor at University of Alaska Fairbanks. Her research focuses on the response of wildlife to global change. In particular, she is interested in the changes in movement behavior of animals to human-induced changes to the climate and their environment. Ophélie investigates mechanisms across several scales: from the individual to the population, with a particular focus on barren-ground caribou in the North American Arctic.
NOMAD Lab
Katie’s research focuses on vegetation change in the Arctic. Her PhD work uses a multi-scale approach to map plant functional type biomass – modeling from fine scale field data, to drone imagery, to wide-spread satellite observations. She is also interested in the interaction between wildlife and vegetation, including how caribou herbivory affects vegetation distribution. Before migrating to NAU, Katie lived and worked in Alaska where she got firsthand experience in Arctic ecosystems, and marveled at the resilience of Arctic plants.
Goetz Lab
Nicole "Nicki" Barbour was a postdoctoral researcher at SUNY ESF and is now an assistant professor at Towson University. She obtained her PhD from University of Maryland and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, where her dissertation focused on using statistical analyses and quantitative approaches to better understanding the movement ecology of sea turtles. Her current work further extends her interests in quantitative movement ecology to develop accessible and novel tools in conservation.
Nicki's Website
Benjamin was a postdoctoral researcher at University of Montana and SUNY ESF. He is now a Liber Eros Fellow at the Université Laval. He obtained his PhD from Université de Sherbrooke, where he studied phenotypic plasticity and life-history trade-offs in bighorn sheep. His research interests lie in behavioral responses to anthropogenic disturbances, human-wildlife coexistence, and biostatistics. He is particularly interested in further integrating human communities and their interests in ecological research and conservation. His post-doctoral research uses recent advances in statistical tools to better understand barren ground caribou movement patterns and demography.
Benjamin's Website
Marron is a PhD candidate in Dr. Bill Fagan’s lab, where her work spans multiple areas across math and biology. Her work for the Fate of the Caribou project involves synthetic modeling of caribou demography, incorporating vegetation metrics, phenology and insect harassment as key pieces. Marron received a B.A. in Mathematics and Statistics with a minor in Russian Studies from Vassar College. There her undergraduate research focused on dynamical systems and chaos with special emphasis on biological applications and population dynamics.
Fagan lab
Megan is a PhD candidate in the Gurarie lab interested in how biological cues like soundscapes and interspecific vocalizations influence movement decision making in caribou. More simply: Do caribou eavesdrop on the soundscape to help them find good habitat patches? She completed her masters at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, where she studied caribou auditory physiology and the soundscapes of the Arctic Coastal Plain.
Gurarie lab
Chloe is pursuing a PhD in Dr. Gurarie’s lab. Her goal with the Fate of the Caribou is to co-create questions that fill information gaps so our research can be applied to important management actions. Chloe relocated to Syracuse from Colorado’s Western Slope after finishing a dual degree (Master in Environmental Management, Master of Science in Ecology), where she studied the influence of recreation on deer and elk and how many GPS collars to deploy to map migration and distribution at the population level for a slew of Colorado’s ungulate species.
Gurarie lab
Qianru Liao is a Ph.D. candidate in Dr. Bill Fagan's lab. She received her B.S. in Geography from Yunnan University and her M.S. in Geography from University at Buffalo, SUNY. Her undergraduate and master's research focused on the spatial pattern of species biodiversity and physical geography. Her research interests include animal movements, the interactions between animal individuals, interactions between animals and their environments, spatial patterns of species biodiversity, and species distribution modeling.
Fagan lab
Skye is a PhD student in the Goetz lab. She is interested in using remotely-sensed data to quantify plant phenology trends in the Arctic and investigate how these trends influence caribou space-use and range shift. She earned a MSc from Humboldt State University in Biology, with a thesis focusing on resource selection in migratory bats. Before starting her program at NAU, Skye worked at Grand Canyon National Park as a GIS Specialist and Wildlife Biologist on a variety of research and management projects related to the conservation of bison, owls, condors, bats, bighorn sheep, and native fish.
Goetz Lab
Sagnik received his master’s in biotechnology from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata, India, and is in a transition to becoming a quantitative wildlife ecologist. He is a PhD student in Gurarie’s lab, broadly interested in spatial ecology and particularly in movement of animals. Sagnik is exploring the cognitive and social drivers of movement decision-making in barren-ground caribou. Currently, he is working on interaction of migratory caribou with roads. When not working, he daydreams about climbing snowy peaks and high mountain passes in the Himalaya.
Gurarie Lab
Celebrity Wright graduated from SUNY ESF, class of 2025, with a B.S. in Wildlife Science. Her primary interests lie in the human impact on wildlife, with a focus on mammalogy, herpetology, and marine invertebrate zoology. She is currently researching the correlation between female barren-ground caribou health and botfly presence in response to the notable decline in the barren-ground caribou populations, primarily attributed to habitat loss.
Megan is a Wildlife Science undergraduate at SUNY College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry. She has a passion for all wildlife, with special interest in migratory behavior, and is delighted to apply this enthusiasm participating with the Fate of the Caribou project in pursuit of her Bachelor's degree. Megan is currently involved with compiling observations from public meeting summaries into a larger database for ongoing research use, integrating Traditional Ecological Knowledge - a significant interest of her developing research career in wildlife.
Jaylen Earls is an undergraduate student at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. As a sophomore, soon-to-be-junior, in the wildlife science major, he is motivated to work vigorously towards having a career as a conversationist and is excited to be a part of the Fate of the Caribou Project. Jaylen is part of the Knowledge of Caribou initiative, gathering Indigenous Knowledge of caribou into a central database.