Current Team Members
Dr. Kenneth J. Feeley
University of Miami
Smathers Chair of Tropical Tree Biology
Director of the Gifford Arboretum
Department of Biology
Coral Gables, FL 33146, USA
Phone: 305-284-5748
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden
11935 Old Cutler Rd.
Coral Gables, FL 33156, USA
Download CV (current as of February 2023)
Current Ph.D. Students (in no particular order)
Manuel Bernal Escobar
Manuel is from Colombia and got his undergraduate degree in Forestry Engineering at the National University of Colombia in Medellin. He got his Masters degree in Management and Conservation of Tropical Forests and Biodiversity from CATIE University in Costa Rica. His past research focused on using tree ring analyses and dendroecology to study forest dynamics along a tropical elevational gradient. For his doctoral research, Manuel is using dendroecological approaches to look at the effects of climate change on tree growth and forest dynamics in the Colombian Andes and in South Florida’s Big Cypress National Preserve.
Learn more at: https://sites.google.com/view/manuelbernalescobar
Lina Aragón
Lina got her undergraduate and Masters degreed in Biology at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, and her second master's degree in Biology at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Lina studies the physiology and ecology of plants in order to better understand how they can persist under extreme environmental conditions worldwide. Moreover, by studying plant ecophysiology, she hopes to increase our understanding of how plants might respond to climate change.
Learn more at: https://linamaragonb4.wixsite.com/my-site
Riley fortier
Riley graduated from the University of Oregon with a BS in Environmental Science in 2017. Afterwards, he worked as a Resident Naturalist in Costa Rica, guiding hikes and leading workshops for students and tourists. Riley later went to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and investigated how plant reproduction is limited by soil nutrients. Riley has also worked in Peru, helping lead a tropical ecology field course with Wildlands Studies. Riley joined the Jungle Biology team as a PhD student in Fall 2020. His dissertation research investigates the effects of climate and anthropogenic disturbances (mining, logging and agriculture, etc.) on the functional and taxonomic composition of Amazonian forests.
Learn more at www.rileyfortier.com
Laís Lautenschlager Rodrigues
Laís earned her BS. in Ecology (2016) and MSc. in Ecology and Biodiversity (2019) at the São Paulo State University in her home country of Brazil. Her past research has focused on frugivory and seed dispersal, forest fragmentation, agricultural landscape, and livestock effects on mammal communities. Her doctoral research at UM aims to understand the role of large tropical ungulates, especially the Lowland Tapir (Tapirus terrestris), in maintaining and promoting plant diversity in Barzil's Atlantic Rainforest.
Learn more at: https://ecologyetal.wordpress.com/
Camilo Palacios-Hurtado
Camilo is deeply interested in disentangling the drivers and ecological interactions that define the assemblage plant communities in the Choco Biogeographic Region in Colombia, one of the most important - but least understood - biodiversity hotspots on the planet.
Learn more at: https://sites.google.com/view/camilopalacios-hurtado
Olga Tserej
Olga got her undergraduate degree at the University of Havana in Cuba. After graduating, she worked as a research assistant on several projects and as a curator for the plant collections at Cuba's National Museum of Natural History. Olga came to the USA 3 years ago and has worked here as a biology school teacher and as an administrative assistant in UM's nursing school. Olga’s research has focused on understanding the ability of subtropical and tropical plants to thermoregulate. Olga has worked in collaboration with the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden to to develop environmental education activities that are now being run throughput Miami-Dade county (and internationally). As part of her research, Olga is assessing the impacts of these environmental activities on teacher and student motivation and knowledge.
alyssa kullberg
Alyssa earned her B.A. in Environmental Science and Spanish from Colby College in 2018. After graduating, she spent a year in Ecuador with a Fulbright scholarship, conducting independent research on a few rare species of magnolia in a montane cloud forest. She was primarily concerned with comparative morphology, phenological monitoring, and distribution modelling of three poorly known species. Alyssa joined the Feeley lab as a PhD student in the Fall of 2019, and she is currently investigating the ability of tropical and subtropical trees to acclimate to increased temperatures through functional and physiological studies of the plants growing along extreme environmental gradients in Miami’s Urban Heat Island and at Peru’s Boiling River.
Learn more at: www.alyssakullberg.com
Current PostDoctoral Researchers
We are always looking for new opportunities to host postdoctoral fellows.
