The Team
Meet the Team
This project is a collaboration between the Fairbanks Natural History Museum and Middlebury College. Students from the college, with the guidance of Professor Mychajliw, have worked to digitize the photos of bloom dates provided by the Fairbanks Museum, and with their oversight, are hoping to publish the results in a paper. This collection is part of a larger initiative to increase conservation awareness and phenological data in the area. Below are some of the key players that have made this project possible:
Anna Rubin
Anna Rubin curates the Wildflower Table at the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium. She works with a team of community volunteers who collect native plants in bloom to be identified and displayed in an exhibit that is refreshed twice a week. She records first bloom dates for each species in a ledger that chronicles plants found in fields, forests, and wetlands in the St. Johnsbury, VT area.
Alexis Mychajliw
Alexis is an Assistant Professor of Biology & Environmental Studies at Middlebury College. She is also a Research Associate at the La Brea Tar Pits, part of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and a Research Associate at the National Museum of Natural History, part of the Smithsonian Institution. She received her BS from Cornell University in 2012 and PhD from Stanford University in 2017. She was formerly a postdoctoral researcher at Hokkaido University in Japan and the University of Oklahoma. Her research is at the intersection of conservation biology, paleontology, and ecology.
Jackson Hawkins
Originally from Rhode Island, Jackson graduated from Middlebury College in February of 2022. He helped to start this project as part of his senior work as an Environmental Studies & Geology major, analyzing the data that were already digitized and helping to map out a direction for future research. His interests lie primarily at the nexus of climate change, community engagement, and snow & ice, and he was thrilled to help the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium start to unlock the power of this community science dataset. In his free time, he enjoys biking, skiing, and making puns.
Valentina Hogenhuis
Valentina is an Environmental Policy major and Italian minor in her last semester at Middlebury College. She is currently working to digitize, analyze, and interpret the Fairbanks Wildflower collection, focusing on publishing the data set. She is passionate about climate change communication, community-based science, and the role of environmental justice in the climate movement. She is from San Francisco, CA, and in her free time enjoys skiing, playing the flute, knitting, and going to swimming holes.
