Project Leads

Erika L. Barthelmess

Erika is the Piskor Professor of Biology at St. Lawrence University and Director of the Nature Up North project. Erika is a conservation biologist whose research and teaching interests include North American porcupines, habitat fragmentation, and road ecology, among other things. She is spearheading the North Country Wild project.

Brett Ford

Brett graduated from St. Lawrence University in 2014 where he majored in Biology and minored in Mathematics. He spends time outside his full-time job as a bioinformatician helping to automate some of the technical aspects of the North Country Wild project. When not coding, he spends his time eating good food, hiking, and exercising his dog, Otto.

Student Researchers

Liz Anderson

Bio coming soon!

Aidan Fauth

Bio coming soon!

Project Dog

Gus is a 7.5 year old labrador retriever who loves to go into the field with our team to deploy and collect game cameras. He has a strong affinity for tennis balls, rolling on dead things, swimming, and belly rubs. You will see Gus in some of our photos when you are classifying images.

Past Team Members

It takes a village to keep a zooniverse project up and running, and we could not have done so without the help of many folks over the years.

Kate Andy

Kate majored in Conservation Biology at St. Lawrence University (Class of 2020). Kate built out the first version of the North Country Wild project and analyzed data from the 2019 field season. She served as co-captain of the St. Lawrence University Nordic Ski Team. Kate hails from New Hampshire and loves the outdoors.

Olivia Bernier

Olivia is an undergrad at St. Lawrence University (Class of 2024) studying conservation biology. She’s passionate about the outdoors, and loves to spend her time trail running, hiking, and catching frogs. Olivia is conducting a forest health project involving canopy density, regeneration, and tree core analysis and is using data from the North Country Wild project to explore the relationship between forest diveresity and structure and mammal diversity. She is also looking at the impact of deer density on forest regeneration. Olivia is one of the folks who sets up cameras in the field for us as well.

Emlyn Crocker

Before heading to graduate school, Emlyn was the Nature Up North Project Manager where she had a direct role in most everything we do. With regard to this project, she worked with our computer science team and with teachers participating in the project. In addition to her work with Nature Up North, Emlyn loves to spend time outside and playing with her dog, River.

Kayla Edmunds

Kayla is the Nature Up North Project Manager and is responsible for day-to-day project operations, including keeping track of North Country Wild. However, her duties have less to do with our Zooniverse instance and more to do with engaging with our student interns who provide project social media and computer support.

Jane Krausman

Jane is an undergraduate student at St. Lawrence University (class of 2023) studying conservation biology and public health. She is currently conducting research on tick ecology in the north country. She is looking at how small mammal diversity influences tick abundance and Lyme prevalence. Jane is interested in disease ecology and One Health initiatives. Jane helps to set up and collect game cameras while she is inn the field collecting ticks.

Corinna Pilcher

Corinna graduated from St. Lawrence University (Class of 2021) where she was a double-major in Computer Science and Biology. Her work with the North Country Wild project involved writing software to streamline uploading of camera trap photos collected by a wide range of participants for later upload here. In the 2020-2021 season, she conducted a senior honors thesis in which she used machine learning to build a tool that automates some aspects of image classification.

Leslie Sandefur

Leslie majored in conservation biology (class of 2020)and is from from mid-coast Maine. Her senior thesis research measured forest diversity and structure in the forests in which our camera traps were deployed in 2019. Leslie is an aspiring runner and spends as much time outside as possible.

Maddy Solomon

Maddy will graduate from St. Lawrence University (Class of 2022) with a major in conservation biology and a minor in public health and hails from Saratoga Springs, New York. She helped to deploy camera traps and works on our social media team. In her spare time, she leads wilderness trips in the Adirondack Mountains and also has experience studying primates.

Donovan Spaulding

Donovan graduated with a major in Conservation Biology at St. Lawrence University (Class of 2019). His senior project created the first phase of the North Country Wild Project. In addition to camera trapping, Donovan enjoys coding in R, skiing, rock & ice climbing, and being outside in general.

Cole Weigartz

Cole graduated from St. Lawrence University (Class of 2021) where he majored in Conservation Biology with minors in Spanish and Global Studies. He was involved in multiple aspects of the North Country Wild, such as camera trap collection and placement.