Dr. Holly Jones is an Associate Professor in Biology and the Institute for the Study of the Environment, Sustainability, and Energy at Northern Illinois University. Her Bachelor's degree came from University of California, Santa Cruz and her graduate degrees are from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Holly trains students to foster curiosity about how ecosystems work and their underlying ecology and to pursue ecological research that enhances environmental stewardship. Her lab's research focuses on how best to prioritize restoration, the links between ecosystem restoration/conservation and human well-being in the face of global climate change, and maximizing restoration gains and investigating restoration trajectories at the local, regional, and global scale. Holly works with non-profit organizations, governmental organizations, land-managers, and the public to ensure her research has on-the-ground applications.

As a National Geographic Explorer, she has studied how island species and ecosystems recover following invasive mammal removal in New Zealand. Her local research looks at how reintroduced bison impacts prairie restoration trajectories. Holly is Lead Editor at the journal Ecological Solutions and Evidence and is passionate about science outreach, especially to K-12 students. Her favorite field assistants are her two young daughters. In her spare time, Holly likes to cook, garden, travel, do yoga, and spend time with her kids, husband, and husky mutt.

Follow her on Twitter @DocHPJones !

Heather Bergan-Roller is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Northern Illinois University and investigates undergraduate biology education. Her research investigates biology student thinking and learning, how and why instructors teach the way they do, how to make classrooms more inclusive, and getting students to communicate science! She enjoys hiking the local forest preserves and making cards with her two kids and running solo. She is excited to lead the MEEC 2021 workshop on SciComm where she will introduce a framework for SciComm and guide attendees through creating their own SciComm.

Follow her on Twitter @HBerganRoller !

Pete studies plant-animal interactions in Dr. Holly Jones' Evidence-based Restoration Lab at NIU. As an avid eater himself, he is especially interested in understanding why small mammals eat so many seeds of some species, but not others. When he is not researching, Pete loves to spend time in the kitchen, relaxing outside, and hanging with his six-month old daughter.

Follow him on Twitter @Pete_Guiden !

Olivia is an ecologist who studies interactions between plant populations and the herbivores that feed on them. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2020 and is currently an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Michigan State University. She is originally from Seattle, and in her free time enjoys riding bikes and sewing.

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Amanda McCormick is broadly interested in aquatic ecology, particularly links between ecosystem processes, consumer dynamics, and food webs. She completed her BS at the University of Michigan. After spending a couple of years teaching, she obtained a MS from Loyola University, Chicago where she studied novel substrates in urban streams. Amanda completed her PhD in 2020 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her PhD work focused on understanding variation in primary production and consumer resource use in a shallow lake. Currently, she is a postdoc at the University of California, Davis, where she is researching the reliance of copepods on phytoplankton and detrital resources in a large river delta system.

Follow her on Twitter @A_R_McCormick !

John Vanek, PhD is an Associate Wildlife Biologist® and postdoctoral fellow at Northern Illinois University. He has a BS in Wildlife Science from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and an MS in Biology from Hofstra University, where he researched the spatial ecology and biogeography of eastern hog-nosed snakes. For his PhD at Northern Illinois University, John helped manage a long-term wildlife monitoring program and used that data to better understand the ecology, conservation and impacts of management of urban wildlife. John has worked for the USFWS, the USDA, the Cooperative Wildlife Research Lab at Southern Illinois University, various consulting firms, and a municipal conservation department. He also spent two years as an environmental educator, which he claims was probably the most rewarding part of his career so far (though exhausting for an introvert).

Follow him on Twitter @wild_ecology !