NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program

Sofia Fogel

Coordinator

In addition to serving as Program Coordinator at the NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program, Sofia is Fellowship Director at the Reducetarian Foundation and Program Coordinator at the NYU Center for Environmental and Animal Protection and the NYU Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy. Previously, Sofia served as Managing Director at Animal Charity Evaluators, Head of US Development at Anima International, Senior Editor at Reducetarian Foundation, and Research Assistant for Food, Animals, and the Environment: An Ethical Approach, by Christopher Schlottmann and Jeff Sebo. Sofia is a graduate of the NYU Environmental Studies and Animal Studies programs.

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sofia.fogel@nyu.edu

AUDREY BECKER

Administrator

Audrey is the Program Administrator at the NYU Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, the NYU Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, and the NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program. Previously, Audrey worked with numerous environmental organizations, focusing on improving communication methods of technical scientific information. She also served as an administrator in the NYU Stern School of Business. An alumna of NYU’s Environmental Studies Undergraduate Program, her areas of research included concentrations of PFAS in local industrial compost and arthropod recolonization in remediated landfill soils.

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audrey.lynn.becker@nyu.edu

Toni sims

Researcher

Toni has worked as a researcher, writer, and editor for a variety of academic and nonprofit institutions. In addition to her work with the NYU Wild Animal Welfare Program and the NYU Mind, Ethics, and Policy Program, she conducts independent and contract research. Previously, she worked as an editor at the Center for AI Safety, a research fellow at Longview Philanthropy, and the managing editor of Social Theory and Practice. She also worked as the director of research for Animal Charity Evaluators, where she led charity evaluations and managed two grant programs. Toni studied philosophy at NYU and received an MA in philosophy from Georgia State University.

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toni.sims@nyu.edu

Arthur Caplan is the Drs. William F. and Virginia Connolly Mitty Professor and founding head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU School of Medicine in New York City. He is the author or editor of 35 books and over 850 papers in peer-reviewed journals. His most recent books are Vaccination Ethics and Policy with Jason Schwartz and Getting to Good: Research Integrity in Biomedicine with Barbara Redman. He has served on a number of national and international committees, including as chair of the Advisory Committee to the UN on Human Cloning, and has received a number of awards and 7 honorary degrees from colleges and medical schools.

✉️ arthur.caplan@nyulangone.org

Matthew Hayek is an Assistant Professor at New York University in the Department of Environmental Studies and affiliated faculty with the NYU Center for Data Science. His research quantifies the impacts of food production on climate change and ecological processes using empirical modeling and geospatial data. His more recent research into climate emissions from agriculture and ecosystem conservation also highlights linkages with animal welfare and agency. As climate change research and policies begin to grapple with animal welfare more broadly, Dr. Hayek aims to create more comprehensive analytical frameworks for bringing wild animals' capacities and considerations into climate mitigation strategies.

✉️ matthew.hayek@nyu.edu

Jennifer Jacquet is interested in globalized cooperation dilemmas, such as climate change and the exploitation of wild animals via fishing and the Internet wildlife trade. She is particularly interested in the role of social approval in encouraging cooperation, and is the author of Is Shame Necessary? New Uses for an Old Tool (2015) and The Playbook: How To Deny Science, Sell Lies, and Make A Killing In The Corporate World (2022). Dr. Jacquet earned a Ph.D. in Natural Resource Management and Environmental Studies from the University of British Columbia.

✉️ jj84@nyu.edu

Julia Monk is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at NYU. Her research explores the roles that animals play in shaping ecosystems, blending tools from wildlife biology, community ecology, and biogeochemistry. She explores how fluctuations in wild animal populations (via biodiversity loss and natural or assisted recovery) impact not only animal communities themselves, but also vital ecosystem processes such as primary productivity and nutrient cycling. Julia also collaborates with historians of science and STS scholars to critically assess how theories about animal sexuality and sexual behavior have reflected the social contexts in which science is produced, and to explore new possibilities opened up by queer, feminist scientific frameworks.

✉️ j.monk@nyu.edu

Colin Jerolmack is Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at NYU. He is also the current Chair of Environmental Studies there. His research examines how relationships with animals and nature shape social life in the city, among other topics. He is author of Up to Heaven and Down to Hell: Fracking, Freedom, and Community in an American Town (2021) and The Global Pigeon (2013). He is also author of many articles on sociology, animals, and the environment, and he is editor of the Animals in Context series for NYU Press and an executive committee member of the NYU Center for Environmental and Animal Protection.

✉️ jerolmack@nyu.edu

Lori Marino is a neuroscientist and adjunct professor of Animal Studies at NYU. She is the

founder and President of the Whale Sanctuary Project and Executive Director of The Kimmela

Center for Scholarship-based Animal Advocacy. Lori’s scientific work focuses on the evolution of the brain and intelligence in dolphins and whales (as well as primates and farmed animals), and on the effects of captivity on wildlife. She has published over 140 peer-reviewed scientific papers, book chapters, and magazine articles in these areas. Lori also works at the intersection of science and animal law and policy and is the co-director (with Professor Kathy Hessler) of the

Animal Law and Science Project at George Washington University. She was also a senior

lecturer in neuroscience and behavioral biology at Emory University for almost twenty years.

✉️ lam9274@nyu.edu

Sonali McDermid is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at NYU. Her research explores the role of landscapes in our regional and global climate systems, with special focus on agriculture as both a driver of global environmental change and vulnerable to it. Sonali uses a variety of tools in her research, including process-based climate models, crop models, and a range of observational and remote-sensing datasets. She is also a research affiliate at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), where she helps develop the land surface component of the NASA GISS ModelE climate model for improved agricultural representation. 

✉️ sps246@nyu.edu

Christine Webb is a lecturer and post-doctoral researcher in Harvard University's Department of Human Evolutionary Biology. A broadly trained primatologist with expertise in social behavior, motivation, and emotion, her recent work centers on consolation and empathy in our close primate cousins across several sanctuary and wild settings. Her research and teaching also engages critically with questions in animal and environmental ethics, particularly in deconstructing anthropocentric biases that affect the way we approach primatology, science, and our relationship with the natural world more broadly.

✉️ christinewebb@fas.harvard.edu

Katrina Wyman is the Wilf Family Professor of Property Law at NYU School of Law, where she teaches and researches in the areas of Property, Urban Environmental Law, and Natural Resources Law, among other subjects. Wyman is co-faculty director of NYU Law’s Frank J. Guarini Center on Environmental, Energy and Land Use Law, and faculty director of the Law School’s LLM program in Environmental and Energy Law. Wyman also runs an annual reading group on animal law, which addresses topics like animal farming, nonhuman personhood, and animal welfare regulations. Wyman was awarded the Podell Distinguished Teaching Award in 2020. She has a BA, MA, and LLB from the University of Toronto, and an LLM from Yale Law School.

✉️ katrina.wyman@nyu.edu