Evan Burnett is completing his PhD as part of the Alpine Bird Project at the University Bern (Switzerland). He is studying how alpine birds behavioral and physiologically adapt to warming temperatures above treeline in the Swiss Alps using fine-scale GPS movement tracking data, in situ climate data, and biophysical models of heat exchange between endotherms and their environment. He previously earned his MSc at Cal Poly Humboldt looking at the physiology and foraging ecology of pikas in northern California.

Dileka Kariyawasam started her PhD at Texas A&M in Fall 2026 as part of the Interdisciplinary Program in Ecology & Evolution (EEB). She is broadly interested in avian and trophic ecology and completed her MSc at University of Texas-Brownsville studying the migration and range dynamics of the Orange-crowned Warbler. She originally became interested in biology through early experiences banding birds in her native Sri Lanka.

Gerson Meza Mori is a PhD student at Universidad Nacional Toribio Rodriguez de Mendoza in Chachapoyas, Peru. He is interested in the impacts of forest fragmentation on avian community structure and connectivity across high elevation cloud forests at tree line, the ceja de selva.

Connor O’Hea started his PhD at Texas A&M in Fall 2026 as part of the Interdisciplinary Program in Ecology & Evolution (EEB). He previously worked for many years as a field technician an a myriad of ornithological research projects across North America and the Caribbean. Much of his recent work focused on management of grassland bird species in the Northeast with the Willistown Conservation Trust.

Raúl Pérez Purizaca is completing his MSc at the Universidad Nacional Agraria La Molina in Peru. He is working on the Aves del Bosque Montano Peruano project in the cloud forests near Chachapoyas, Peru, and is studying longevity of tropical montane birds through mist netting surveys of forests where Felicity and Ian began working in 2014. He is broadly interested in using bird banding as a tool to study the demography and molt strategies of avian communities.

Mei Rao is a PhD student as part of the EEB program at Texas A&M University. Mei brings extensive experience in evolutionary biology and genomics that she acquired during her undergrad years at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. They are broadly interested in developing a project that examines the mechanistic impacts of Anthropogenic disturbance on animal ecology, using physiological, genomic, and transcriptomic approaches. Check out Mei’s website!

Alice Ruffieux is completing her MSc on the Alpine Bird Project at the University of Bern (Switzerland). She is using camera traps to study how vertebrates living in the alpine zone above treeline use rock shelters to behaviorally thermoregulate during hot summer conditions.

Elias Frank is from Austin, Texas majoring in Ecology and Conservation Biology and specializing in eco-informatics. He is interested in grasslands and marshes and enjoys wildlife photography. He has experience working with field cameras, audio recorders, and the bioinformatics techniques used in the SEA-Phages program.

Nick Whalen worked on the Ecology and Conservation of Private Lands project in Spring 2026. He collected various datasets on bird communities, habitat composition and structure, and invertebrate biomass on private lands enrolled in the Texas EcoLabs program across the Post Oak Savannah ecoregion.