Directors & Founders

Jacinta Beehner
Director, Founder
Jacinta Beehner is a co-founder and Director of the project. Dr. Beehner is an Associate professor in the Departments of Psychology and Anthropology at the University of Michigan. (...more...)
She received her B.S. in Biology from Boston College in 1994, followed by an M.A. (1998) and a Ph.D. (2003) in Biological Anthropology from Washington University. For her dissertation, she studied the reproductive behavior and success of hybrid female baboons in Ethiopia. She then was a Research Associate with Drs. Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney at the University of Pennsylvania studying the hormones and behavior of chacma baboons in Botswana. Next, she moved on to a postdoc position with Dr. Jeanne Altmann at Princeton University working on the reproductive endocrinology of female yellow baboons. Since 2005, she has been studying sexual selection, reproductive strategies, and social behavior in geladas living in the Simien Mountains National Park of Ethiopia. She also is the director of the Core Assay Facility in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. In her spare time, Jacinta likes to dream up ways of getting her two children into the field.
You can read more about Jacinta and access her CV here.
Thore Bergman
Director, Founder
Thore Bergman is a co-founder and Director of the project. Dr. Bergman is an Associate professor in the Departments of Psychology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan. (...more...)
He received a B.S. in Zoology and Conservation Biology from the University of Wisconsin in 1993, followed by his Ph.D. in Evolutionary and Population Biology from Washington University in 2000. For his dissertation, he studied behavior and reproductive success in hybrid baboons in Ethiopia. He was then a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania from 2001-2005 studying social behavior and cognition in baboons in Botswana. Since 2005, he has been studying behavior, communication, and cognition in geladas. In his spare time, Thore likes to...well, um, with two young children at home, he has no spare time.
You can read more about Thore's work here.
Amy Lu
Director

Amy Lu is a Director of the project. Dr. Lu is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stony Brook University. (...more...)

Amy is broadly interested in behavioral endocrinology, reproductive physiology, sexual selection, and development of non-human primates. She finished her Ph.D. at Stony Brook University (advised by Carola Borries), where her research focused on female reproduction and mating strategies of Phayre’s leaf monkeys (Trachypithecus crepusculus phayrei) at Phu Khieo Wildlife Sanctuary in Thailand. She was then a postdoc in the Beehner lab and at the University of Illinois, focusing on juvenile female development in geladas. Amy is currently examining how male takeovers might act as a form of early life adversity, altering both maternal investment and offspring developmental trajectories in geladas. In her spare time Amy she enjoys walking with her dog and playing board games with friends.
You can read more about Amy and her lab members on her website, here.

Noah Snyder-Mackler
Director

Noah Snyder-Mackler is a Director of the project. Dr. Snyder-Mackler is an Associate Professor in the School of Life Sciences and Center for Evolution & Medicine at Arizona State University. (...)

He received his Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania where he was co-advised by Drs. Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney. Broadly, his research focuses on how variation in genotype and behavior affect fitness. During his PhD he used non-invasive genetic sampling techniques in combination with detailed behavioral sampling to study the effects of relatedness on social behaviors, such as grooming, cooperation, and association in geladas. His research has provided important new data on kinship-behavior interactions and the evolution of complex societies in mammals. Noah then conducted his postdoctoral research in the lab of Dr. Jenny Tung at Duke University where he studied how individual variation in behavior and genotype mitigate the detrimental immunological effects of chronic social stress.
You can find a link to his lab's website here, where you can read more about their work.

India Schneider-Crease
Director

India Schneider-Crease is a co-founder and director of the project. She received her PhD from the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University, advised by Dr. Charles Nunn and Dr. Leslie Digby. Her research focuses on understanding the physiological, sociocultural, and ecological drivers of disease ecology and zoonotic disease emergence, using taeniid tapeworms infecting geladas as a model system. In her free time, she works on facilitating community-based conservation initiatives in Ethiopia and climbing rocks.

Field team

Eshete Jejaw
Research Assistant
Esheti Jejaw is the most senior of our Ethiopian Research Assistants. He has worked with the UMGRP since 2008. (...more...)
His family is based in Michiby (a village in the park) but he commutes between Debark (where he has a house with his wife, Salam) and Sankaber (where he lives during the working week). We like to think of him as our "bachelor expert" but Esheti also is well-versed on all the behaviors of the units as well.
Ambaye Fanta
Research Assistant
Ambaye Fanta has worked with the UMGRP since 2010. (...more...)
Ambaye’s uncanny ability to identify individual geladas in the fog, off cliff edges and behind bushes has proved invaluable. In his free time, he enjoys learning about African wildlife, laughing at silly ferengi behavior, and decorating the Sankaber bachelor pad he shares with Esheti and Setey.
Setey Girmay
Research Assistant
Setey Girmay has worked with the UMGRP since 2011. (...more...)
He is our jack-of-all-trades guy and does everything from census, to focal sampling, to sample collection. Impressively, Setey knows more animals than any of us - and can recognize even infants at a glance. We also have designated Setey as our project "social planner" and he is in charge of planning any parties at Sankaber.
Shiferaw Asrat
Logistics
 (Shif) was born in Addis Ababa, but now lives in Debark--a small town at the foothills of the Simien Mountains. (...more...)
He helps to manage logistics for the UMGRP, while running his own trekking company, Simien Trek, and his own ecolodge, Limalimo Lodge. Shif regularly travels in and outside Ethiopia.
Tariku W/aregay
Logistics
Tariku Waregay has worked with the UMGRP since 2011 (and he has worked with Thore and Jacinta on different projects dating back to 1995!). (...more...)
He is based in Addis Ababa where he runs his tourism business company - Yama Tours (www.yamatoursethiopia.com).  He helps the project stuff with all logistics, airport pickup and hotel arrangements, running around Addis Ababa for residence permits and drivers licenses. His tour company is - hands down - one of the best tour companys in all of Ethiopia (family members and professional colleagues of our project routinely use his company for their holiday and professional trips around Ethiopia).

US support staff

Lorin Hutchings
Lab Technician

Postdocs

Jacob Feder
Postdoc

Jacob Feder is a PhD candidate in the Interdepartmental Doctoral Program in Anthropological Sciences (IDPAS) at Stony Brook University, advised by Amy Lu.

In 2015, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology and Music from Wesleyan University. He is broadly interested in the life history, social relationships, and development of non-human primates. His dissertation research aims to draw links between social bondedness, physiological stress, and immune outcomes in juvenile geladas. In his spare time, he enjoys playing bass guitar, reading, and watching Jeopardy. You can read more on his personal website [https://jacobfeder.weebly.com/], and you can follow him on Twitter @jacobafeder.

Graduate Students

Brooklynn Scott
Graduate Student

Brooklynn Scott is an Evolutionary Biology PhD candidate in the SMack Lab at Arizona State University with Dr. Noah Snyder-Mackler. Previously, Brooklynn completed her BS in Anthropology at the University of Utah where she worked on a project studying variation in social behavior by looking at genetic variants across the macaque phylogeny.Brooklynn is broadly interested in using evolutionary genetics/genomics to study genetic variation and adaptive traits. Her current research focuses on using gelada population history to delve deeper into karyotype differences between groups. She is also interested in gelada specific adaptive traits, particularly those pertaining to their extreme high-altitude environment.

Lucia Muzzarelli
Graduate Student
Natalia Camargo
Graduate Student
Medhavi Verma
Gradaute Student

Medhavi Verma is a PhD student in the Global Health program in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at ASU, advised by Dr. India Schneider-Crease. Hailing from New Delhi, India, she moved to the US to attend Washington University in St. Louis in 2018, where she majored in Biology and minored in Psychology. As a member of the Ben-Shahar Lab, she explored the gene-brain-behavior relationship in glial cholinergic receptors. After graduating, she joined the Bracewell Lab at Indiana University where she studied chromosomal evolution and speciation in flies, beetles, and fungi. Medhavi is broadly interested in disease and behavioral ecology, human-wildlife interaction, and conservation. Outside of the lab, she enjoys cooking, crocheting, reading and re-watching sitcoms. You can find her on Twitter @Medhavi_Verma17.

Undergraduate Researchers

Maya Saroff
Undergraduate Student

Maya Saroff is a BS candidate in Biological Sciences: Genetics, Cell and Developmental Biology and a dual MS candidate in Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB) at Arizona State University, advised by Dr. India Schneider-Crease. She is interested in viral discovery, disease ecology, and evolutionary biology as a whole. Her undergraduate honors thesis aims to explore new viruses identified in geladas to understand disease ecology, transmission, and evolutionary relationships between gelada-identified viral serotypes and those of other primates and animals. In her free time, she enjoys being active and spending time with friends and family.

Tiffany Duong
Undergraduate Student

Alumni