Elsa Ordway
Principal Investigator
Elsa is an interdisciplinary ecosystem ecologist, working at the intersection of field ecology, land system science, remote sensing, and modeling. She draws on a wide range of methods and datasets to address research questions about forest ecosystem dynamics with an emphasis on exploring patterns of structure and function and the processes that underpin them, and the interactions between climate change, land use change, forest ecological responses, and people. Elsa also enjoys climbing in the Sierra and exploring LA.
Isaac Aguilar
PANGEA Project Coordinator & Lab Tech
inaguilar[at]ucla.edu
Isaac is a postbac lab technician and project coordinator for the NASA Terrestrial Ecology Scoping Campaign in the Tropics, PANGEA. He is an interdisciplinary biodiversity scientist with interests investigating the synergies of land use, natural resource management, and ecosystem services across tropical landscapes. Their undergraduate background in Biology and Ecosystem Management at UC Berkeley includes field ecological research from the tropics to the arctic. Isaac is a UCSC Doris Duke Conservation Scholar and has a demonstrated commitment to diversity and educational success initiatives in science and conservation. Some activities Isaac enjoys are hiking, climbing, karaoke, soccer, and volleyball. In the future, Isaac plans to build on his research in the Sierra de Manantlán, México through a graduate program to investigate the effects of rapid environmental change on Mesoamerican biodiversity, ecosystem services, and human geography.
Sumalika Biswas
Postdoctoral Researcher
sumalikabiswas[at]ucla.edu
Sumalika is a remote sensing scientist interested in tropical ecology. She uses satellite and drone imagery in conjunction with field data, machine/deep learning models and programming to address interdisciplinary research questions in ecology, land system science, conservation biology, and fire ecology in the tropics. Her current research focuses on mapping forest phenology and land cover change in the Dja landscape in Cameroon. Outside the lab, Sumalika enjoys exploring the landscape, culture and food scene in LA and Flagstaff.
Robert Fofrich
Postdoctoral Researcher
robertfofrich[at]ucla.edu
Robert is an earth system scientist and a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA. His research interests are in mitigating global environmental change and adapting vulnerable communities to a changing environment. He is currently researching biomass-sourced climate change mitigation strategies and their effects on global conservation goals and local crop production. He received his Ph.D. in 2022 in earth system science from the University of California, Irvine, where his dissertation focused on the energy-sector challenges of limiting future climate warming at or below 2oC and the impacts on global agricultural systems if international climate targets are surpassed. Robert has also previously served on the Orange County Chapter of the Society for Conservation Biology (OCSCB) board, and he is now a part of the National Postdoctoral Association (NPA) Postdoctoral Council (PDC). Before entering academia, Robert worked on various environmental issues facing indigenous communities in North America and spearheaded wildlife conservation efforts across Southern California.
Ary Amaya
MSc Student
arycamaya[at]gmail.com
Ary is an Indigenous ecologist originally from the pueblos of Santiago Ixcuintla and Amatlán de Jora, Nayarit, MX. She is interested in the integration of Indigenous ecological knowledge systems and western understandings of plant community ecology. Her research aims to address the effects of climate change on urban terrestrial ecosystems using remote sensing, ecological niche modeling, and traditional Indigenous ecological knowledge.
Morgan Dean
PhD Student
morgandean[at]g.ucla.com
Morgan is focused on mapping forest structural metrics for application in animal-landscape feedback loop studies. To achieve these tasks, she fuses active and passive remotely sensed data then implements machine learning algorithms to create wall-to-wall maps. She is also interested in understanding animal movement patterns as a function of landscape permeability, structural diversity, and fruiting phenology via predictive frameworks and object-based change detection.
Carissa DeRanek
PhD Student
caderanek[at]g.ucla.com
Carissa will be studying the impacts of drought, habitat fragmentation, and fire on forest structure and function. She is excited to bring interdisciplinary approaches to analyzing the distribution of plant traits across spatial and temporal scales. Carissa is also looking forward to getting involved in the teaching programs at UCLA in order to continue building her skills in education and to be engaged with the broader LA community.
Anna Ongjoco
PhD Student
annajongjoco[at]g.ucla.com
Anna is a Ph.D student, co-advised by Dr. Elsa Ordway at UCLA and Dr. Leander Anderegg at UCSB. She received an M.S. and a B.S. in Biological Science at Cal Poly Pomona, where she studied the ecophysiology of two native pine species in the San Bernardino Mountains. Currently, her work focuses on understanding the water-use strategies of three California native oak species and how they will respond to more frequent and intense droughts. Anna aims to advance the understanding of the coordination of hydraulic function and carbon metabolism using both in situ field measurements and remote sensing to shed light on the physiological mechanisms that underpin drought induced mortality.
Hannah Stouter
PhD Student
hstouter[at]g.ucla.edu
Hannah is interested in studying issues at the intersection of conservation biology and political ecology. Specifically, she is interested in using an interdisciplinary lens to study the impacts of protected areas on biodiversity and local communities. In addition, she wants to explore the role political, economic, and cultural structures play in the creation of protected areas. Moving to LA from the east coast, Hannah is excited to spend time outside, hiking, backpacking, and exploring the west.
PhD Student
nidrup[at]gmail.com
Nidhi is interested in the functions, physiology and ecology of plants. For her PhD she hopes to link the understanding of leaves and plants at a small scale from lab experiments and data to understanding forests and ecosystems at a large scale through remote sensing. In thinking about connecting plant physiology to understanding large scale forest functioning, she is also excited about the intersection between people, plants and forests, and hopes to collaborate across disciplines to think through these topics together.
Ellin Zhao
PhD Student
ellinz[at]ucla.edu
Mark Avila
Undergraduate Researcher
Alcen Chiu
Undergraduate Researcher
Nico Crosson
Undergraduate Researcher
Nico is a fourth-year physical geography undergraduate minoring in geology and GIS. His primary research interests revolve around biogeochemical cycling in tropical rainforest and tropical peatland ecosystems, with a particular focus on the carbon and water cycles. More specifically, he is interested in understanding how tropical forests and the soils beneath them, especially peat, will respond to anthropogenic and natural forcings, including an increased exposure to higher temperatures and elevated CO2 concentrations, seawater intrusions, windthrows, and land-use change. He plans on conducting research by utilizing a combination of remote sensing, laboratory/greenhouse, and field methods, and hopes to bring an interdisciplinary approach to the science community that bridges the geosciences with forest ecology. Outside of research, Nico enjoys visiting other Californian cities and exploring the solace of California’s mountains, forests, and coastlines.
Miles Dailey
Undergraduate Researcher
Miles is a second-year Computational and Systems Biology major who is interested in the intersection of technology and ecological data. He is looking forward to applying his knowledge of programming to the processing and analysis of remote sensing data, specifically through the use of machine learning and computer vision. Outside of the lab, Miles also enjoys competing on the UCLA Club Swim team and backpacking in his home state of Washington.
Elona Khoshaba
Undergraduate Researcher
Lindsay Land
Undergraduate Researcher
Morgan Micallef
Undergraduate Researcher
Justine Pendergraft
Undergraduate Researcher
Justine is a third year Computer Science and Engineering major who is interested in applying engineering to help study and address environmental issues. She enjoys interdisciplinary topics, and loves to learn about remote sensing, machine learning, robotics, drones, and forest ecology. In her free time, she likes to camp, stargaze, and play the oboe.
Kelsey Sanchez
Undergraduate Researcher
Nate Trux
Undergraduate Researcher
Lab Alumni
- Valentina Doerre-Torres, 2020-2022
- Karen Dutko, 2021-2023, Graduate Student, UCLA
- Naomi Hegwood, 2020-2023, Data Scientist, Harvard Forest
- Ofelia Garcia Prado, 2021-2023
- Germar Gonzalez, 2021-2022, Graduate Student, Yale University
- Kristi Le, 2022-2023
- Aminah Mahadi, 2021-2023, Soil Water Air Protection Enterprise (SWAPE) LLC
- Jon Ocón, 2021-2023, Visiting Assistant Professor, Clark University
- Sophia Roberts, 2021-2022, Graduate Student, Yale University