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Current members
Current members
Kimberly Cook
PhD candidate
Kimberly has a BS in Animal Behavior and MS in Library Science from Indiana University. She currently studies biogeography of land bridge and sky island mammals using field, museum and computational approaches.
Funding: Highlands Biological Station Grant-in-aid of research and an American Society of Mammalogists Grant-in-aid of research.
Binaya Adhikari
PhD candidate
Binaya holds both a BS & MS degrees in Forestry from Tribhuvan University, Nepal. He has additional experience as a wildlife manager in Nepal’s forest office and has published several articles on human-wildlife interaction and species distributions. His current focus is on spatial ecology and studying the biogeography of sky island mammals and protected areas.
Brenden Orocu
PhD Student
Brenden's research is focused on integrating metabolic and demographic theories of life history to advance the Equal Fitness Paradigm (EFP; see papers). His areas of interest include population dynamics, life history theory, and evolutionary ecology. He received his master's and undergraduate degrees from BYU in Biology and in Biodiversity & Conservation, respectively. Outside of research, he loves spending time with his wife and son, being outdoors, and watching/playing sports.
Ethan Duncil
Research Data Scientist
Ethan recently graduate from UK and is now a graduate student at Case Western. He is assisting the lab with a number of 'big data' projects including leading a study comparing published life history databases. He presented this work at the 2024 annual meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists held at CU-Boulder.
YOU!
The lab is currently seeking undergraduate researchers at UK.
If you are interested in joining the lab, please send a CV/resume and a paragraph about your interest in the lab's research projects.
Robbie Burger
Lab PI
Assistant Professor
Robbie is an aspiring naturalist, life historian and macroecologist. He enjoys hiking, birding, fishing, gardening, cooking, traveling and playing with his canine and felid friends!
ResearchGate
Former lab members
Former lab members
Trinity Johnson
2022 BS in Biology with honors
Trinity was a Ribble Undergraduate Research Fellow and an NSF-Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) assisting the lab with compiling a 'sky island' biodiversity database. She also conducted an honors thesis studying humpbacked whales in Alaska!
Jules Stowe
Undergraduate
Biology Major
Entomology Minor
Jules is assisting Kimberly with conducting field and museum studies of Appalachian shrews. Her interests in forensic entomology has led her to develop an independent project studying carrion-eating beetles of spruce-fir forests.
Brianna Bryant
2024 BS in Biology & Political Science
Brianna co-led a project studying global human macroecology. She is developing a Shiny R package to facilitate harmonizing various cross-country databases for teaching and research. She is currently an environmental engineer based in Louisville.
Devin Thompson
2023 BS in Biology
Devin co-led a project studying global human macroecology. He led exploratory efforts using AI to write R code to harmonize and manage cross-cultural databases for teaching and research. He is also a certified firefighter!
See this video about his science journey at UK.
Harrison Guy York
2024 BS in Natural Resource and Environmental Science
Harrison assisted the lab with field projects in the southern Appalachians. He has broad interest in biodiversity conservation and management. He previously was a climbing and outdoor guide in the western US.
Funding: CAFE Undergraduate Research Award.
Valeria Calderon Triana
Undergraduate
Valeria is originally from Colombia and is majoring in Computer Science. She assisted the lab with a data project studying green space scaling and urban biodiversity.
Funding: Commonwealth Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) Fellowship program.
Mary Christina Obeng
Former high school student
Mary Christina was at student at the STEAM Academy Public High in Lexington and part of the UK START Program: STEM Through Authentic Research Training. They learned about macroecology research in the lab and assisted with a global database of island mammals.
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