People
HALL OF FAME: PRINGLE LAB ALUMNI
Michiel Veldhuis
Ana Gledis da Conceição
Ana Gledis was a research technician with the Lab from 2017–2019 and is now pursuing a Master’s degree in conservation biology in Gorongosa National Park. She worked on several projects related to understanding the restoration of the Gorongosa ecosystem.
Jen Guyton
Jen was a PhD student in the Lab from 2013—2018 and is now a photographer, explorer, and naturalist working for National Geographic and others. [Website]
Jessica Castillo Vardaro
As a post-doc in the Pringle and Tarnita Labs from 2015 until 2018, Jess led a multi-species behavioral, ecological, and population-genetic study of termites in Kenya, to understand how competition influences population structure and spatial self-organization. She also is the first to work out molecular techniques for studying termite diets! Jess is now an Assistant Professor in the Biological Sciences at San Jose State University. [Website]
Johan Pansu
Johan, a world-class molecular ecologist, was a post-doc in the lab from 2016 to 2018. Building on our lab’s prior work using DNA metabarcoding to study large-herbivore diets in Africa, Johan led (and continues to lead!) a pioneering effort to characterize large-mammal food webs throughout southeastern Africa. In the meantime, Johan has moved on to a prestigious Marie Skłodowski-Curie Fellowship, based with CSIRO (in Sydney, making us jealous again…)
Tyler Coverdale
Tyler came into the lab as a phenom out of Brown University. During his PhD work at Princeton, Tyler made a number of fascinating discoveries about the effects of elephants and other large herbivores on plant communities and plant antiherbivore defenses in African savannas. He is among the inaugural cohort of Presidential Postdoctoral Fellows at Cornell University, where he is working with Anurag Agrawal. [Website]
Chris Baker
After completing his PhD at Harvard, Chris joined the Pringle and Tarnita Labs as a post-doc from 2015 to 2017. With us, he spearheaded an exciting project focusing on how termite mounds in African savannas generate spatial patterns that propagate throughout the ecosystem. Chris has moved on to the Pierce Lab at Harvard, where he is working on disentangling leech-host food webs (among other things, we are sure). [Website] [CV]
Josh Daskin
Josh was the inaugural Pringleton, our first PhD Student. His PhD work on the effects of armed conflict on wildlife populations and ecological dynamics was first-rate and first-of-its-kind, and Josh helped to spark the then-nascent ecological research program in Gorongosa National Park. Josh is now a Fish and Wildlife Biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Fortunately for us, we still cross paths with Josh regularly in Gorongosa. [Website]
Tyler Kartzinel
Tyler was with us from 2013 to 2017, first as a Pringleton post-doc and later as a TNC NatureNet Fellow. He left Princeton to join the faculty at Brown University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and a Fellow in the Institute at Brown for Environment & Society. Tyler built the Pringleton molecular lab from the ground up and led our first forays into DNA metabarcoding; we still work with him on projects in Kenya. [Website]
Ryan Long
Former post-doc Ryan Long (2013-2014) is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Idaho! We have yet to meet his match in terms of expertise in mammalian physiological ecology, movement ecology, and their interface. We continue to collaborate with Ryan on a long-term NSF-funded study on the ecology, behavior, and energetics of spiral-horned antelopes (that’s bushbuck, nyala, and kudu for you big-mammal noobs) in Gorongosa National Park, Mozambique. [Website]
Patty Chen
Former Lab Manager Patty Chen (2013-2015) has moved on to post-baccalaureate studies at Columbia University and is conducting clinical research at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. She was a fantastic lab manager and a key contributor to several papers. She is going to be a life-saving physician someday soon, and we were very fortunate to have her in our orbit for a few years.