People
Principal Investigators
Tom Hobbs
Professor
Graduate Degree Program in Ecology and
Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory
Colorado State University
N. Thompson Hobbs is a Professor, Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL) and Graduate Degree Program in Ecology (GDPE) at Colorado State University. His work focuses on understanding reciprocal relationships between large herbivores and ecosystems. Current projects include studies of dynamics of chronic wasting disease in populations of mule deer in Colorado, modeling the Yellowstone bison population and effects of brucellosis on its dynamics, and investigations of landscape dynamics shaped by herbivory on Yellowstone's Northern Range. Hobbs is an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow and has won numerous awards for his work including the Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Conservation Biology. He teaches Systems Ecology: An Introduction to Ecological Modeling to graduate students at Colorado State University.
Mike Antolin
Professor
Department of Biology
Colorado State University
Mike Antolin received his Ph.D. from Florida State University in 1990, and has been in the Department of Biology at Colorado State University since 1992. His research focuses on spatial epidemiology of infectious diseases, using molecular genetic techniques to trace host movement and pathogen transmission. Most of his work has been on Black-tailed prairie dogs and plague, caused by the same flea-borne bacterial pathogen responsible for the Black Death in medieval Europe.
Randy Boone
Research Scientist
Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory
Colorado State University
Randall Boone is a Research Scientist III within the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, where he has worked for more than 11 years. Randall is a wildlife ecologist with training from Oregon State University and the University of Maine. His experience is diverse, however, with research in spatial analyses and GIS, ecosystem modeling, landscape ecology, database management, biogeographical relationships of birds and plants, species/habitat relationships, wildlife and pastoral livestock mobility, spectroscopy, cluster analysis, and telemetry techniques. Randall's current research analyzes how landscape fragmentation and climate change can alter forage acquisition in animals, effects of land subdivision on pastoral communities, deer disease ecology, effects of energy extraction on Colorado ecosystems, and other questions pertaining to the movement of animals across landscapes.
Jennifer Hoeting
Associate Professor
Department of Statistics
Colorado State University
Jennifer A. Hoeting is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics at Colorado State University. She does research in the areas of Bayesian statistics, model selection and uncertainty, and spatial statistics. Much of her recent research is focused on developing new statistical methods and models to answer ecological scientific questions. Hoeting has received several awards for teaching. She co-wrote the book /Computational Statistics/ with Geof Givens which has been adopted as a graduate-level textbook at some of the nation's top universities.
Mike Miller
Wildlife Veterinarian
Colorado Division of Wildlife
Simon Tavener
Professor
Department of Mathematics
Colorado State University
Staff
Caroline Krumm
Research Associate
Caroline Krumm received her Bachelor's in Wildlife Biology and a Master’s in the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology from Colorado State University. She has worked on various studies of chronic wasting disease in deer since 1998, including a study examining selective predation by mountain lions on diseased prey. Her interests are disease and predator-prey dynamics in wildlife populations worldwide.
Jill Lackett
Project Manager and Education/Outreach Coordinator
Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory
Colorado State University
Jill Lackett has been a research associate at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory since 1998. She has a master's degree in Anthropology from CSU, with an emphasis on human ecology. Her research interests include conservation, coupled human-natural systems, and impacts of and adaptation to climate change.
Kati Kybko
Work Study Student
Kati Zybko is an undergraduate student in the Department of Natural Resources at Colorado State University; she is majoring in Conservation Biology and is getting her minor in Spanish. She is working as a field technician for the project.
Graduate Students
Nick Cummings
Statistics PhD Student
Nick Cummings is a PhD student in the Department of Statistics at Colorado State University, researching Bayesian hierarchical modeling under the advisement of Jennifer Hoeting. In 2010, he won the Graybill Award for Excellence in Linear Models.
Nathan Galloway
Ecology PhD Student
Nathan received his Bachelor's from Iowa State University and then spent several years studying cancer microbiology and the within-host dynamics of the zoonotic pathogen, Anaplasma phagocytophillum. He is now using the tools of molecular ecology and statistics to address ecological questions about disease processes and impacts at a larger scale.
Chris Geremia
Ecology PhD Student
Chris Geremia is interested in applied ecology, and studies population and disease dynamics in large ungulates including elk and bison in Yellowstone National Park, and deer in Colorado.
Mike Mikucki
Math Master's Student
Mike Mikucki recently graduated summa cum laude from Colorado State University with a degree in applied mathematics and a minor in physics. As an undergraduate, Mike participated two years in FEScUE, an internship on mathematical models in ecology. Mike is currently a graduate student at CSU and will teach calculus in the fall. He is currently researching under Simon Tavener on SENSAI, a program that performs automated sensitivity analysis on ecological models.