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Staff

The citizen science staff is a team whose various strengths in science, education, evaluation, administration, and science communication allows for synergies that drive novel project designs required for success delivering programming at a continental scale.

Joe Alfonso , application developer  

Joe Alfonso has a M.S. in Computer Science from U.C. Davis and is responsible for coordinating the web application development for citizen science.

David Bonter, Project FeederWatch  

David Bonter (Ph.D., University of Vermont, 2003) is an ornithologist interested in bird migration and survival. He’s currently the project leader for Project FeederWatch in the Citizen Science program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Project FeederWatch is a long-term study of the abundance and distribution of birds in winter in the United States and Canada. The program enlists thousands of bird watchers to count birds for scientific research. David is also the Director of Research and Vice President of Braddock Bay Bird Observatory (BBBO). The Observatory is located on the south shore of Lake Ontario near Rochester, New York, and is one of the premiere locations in North America to study songbirds during migration stopover periods. Approximately 10,000 birds of 110 species are banded at BBBO during spring and fall migration annually.

 

Anne Marie Johnson, Project Assistant, FeederWatch

As a Project Assistant for Project FeederWatch, Anne Marie coordinates development of printed materials for project participants, helps maintain the project's web site, and provides participant support. Anne Marie began working with Project FeederWatch in 1999 after moving to Ithaca from western Massachusetts where she was a middle school counselor. She is an avid birder and is active in the local bird club, serving as editor for the club's newsletter.

Genna Knight , Project Assistant, FeederWatch

As a Project Assistant for Project FeederWatch, Genna spends her time writing feature articles for the website and project publications, editing FeederWatch web pages and printed materials, as well as collecting and archiving participant photos, reviewing and scanning incoming FeederWatch data, and providing participant support for online data entry. An avid writer and photographer, Genna spent a year studying writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England and holds a B.A. and M.A. in English. Genna joined the FeederWatch team in November 2007.

Chris Marx , GIS specialist and application developer

Chris earned a B.S. in Natural Resources at Cornell in 2006 and joined Citizen Science as an application developer after a brief stint as a GIS modeler and research assistant at the lab. Chris brings his GIS skills to Citizen Science and specializes in google interfaces for data collection as well as creation of google gadgets for specialized data entry and visualization needs. He has worked on Celebrate Urban Birds, NestWatch visualizations, and his tools have been used in other projects, including JayWatch, which focuses on the endangered Florida Scrub-Jay.

Cindy Marquis , Finance Specialist

Cindy oversees administrative needs for the Citizen Science, Evolutionary Biology, Bird Population Studies, and Conservation Science programs at the lab, including helping with grant proposals, budgets, and oversight.

Patty Porupski , Administrative Assistant

Patty handles administrative responsibilities for the Citizen Science program at the lab, including ordering and myriad other activities!

Karen Purcell, Project Leader, Urban Bird Studies

Karen Purcell is Project Leader for Celebrate Urban Birds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.  Karen was raised in Chile, South America and has a background in biology and education. She was formerly a public school teacher in the Ithaca City School District and worked with teens in foster care. At the Lab she has concentrated much of her efforts in trying to engage and support under-served audiences in the sciences.

Sarah Seroussi , Web Designer, Citizen Science

Sarah Seroussi joined the lab as a web designer for Citizen Science in summer 2007 with 10 years' experience as a print and web designer in the corporate and publishing worlds. Her new designs for NestWatch, Nest Cams, Cam Clickr were rolled out in spring 2008, and we are expecting that the new Citizen Science Web Page will be up soon. These changes in "look" and usability represent a long awaited modernization of our web tools and resources.

Kenyon Stratton , Project Assistant, NestWatch, NestCams, and CamClickr projects

 

 

Christianne White , Project Assistant, Celebrate Urban Birds and FeederWatch

Christianne White has a B.A. from Yale and a Masters from Michigan State University. She has worked in the communications and marketing fields and joined the lab as a project assistant for Celebrate Urban Birds in summer 2007. Christianne's background and experience quickly made her an valuable part of the project management staff; she has also temporarily worked as a project assistant for FeederWatch.

Ben Zuckerberg , Geospatial Statistician

Benjamin Zuckerberg (Ph.D., SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry) is a postdoctoral associate focused on using Citizen Science data (such as Project FeederWatch) to analyze winter bird distributions, abundance, and population trends at multiple temporal and spatial scales. His past research on birds includes multi-scaled studies on the effects of habitat disturbance on early-successional birds in Connecticut and Nantucket Island. His doctoral research focused on using New York State’s two Breeding Bird Atlases (1980-85 and 2000-05) to analyze distributional changes in bird populations in relation to climate change and forest fragmentation. His research interests include spatial ecology, thresholds in avian responses to habitat loss, climate change, and the use of emerging technologies in studying landscape-scale changes in bird communities. .

Past Citizen Science Team members:

Michal Kuklis , Application Developer

As application developer for Citizen Science , Michal worked closely with the NestWatch team to design and create citizen science web applications, including novel tools for data entry (CamClickrs and NestWatch)Michal was also in the Cornell employee degree program where he completed a Masters Degree Computer Science in 2008. In July 2008 he joined a new startup development team.

Megan Whitman, Former Proect Assistant, FeederWatch and The Birdhouse Network

Megan Whitman earned her M.Sci. from the University of Rhode Island, where she studied ways of measuring mass change in migratory birds. Before graduate school, she enjoyed four years working on a variety of avian field jobs in Central America and the U.S., wintering in the tropics, banding fall and spring migrants in the U.S., and working summer nesting jobs was a good life! After graduate school, she worked briefly in the regulatory field before finding her home here at the Lab. Meg was promoted to project leader of the Home Study Course in fall of 2007! Fortunately, she is just down the hall.

Tina Phillips, Project Leader, NestWatch

Tina Phillips was project leader for The Birdhouse Network, and its later incarnations, NestWatch, and NestCams, and CamClickr for over 10 years. Currently, she is a pursuing a Ph.D. in Science Education at Cornell University, focusing on evaluation. In fall, 2009, she moved over into the evaluation program at the lab.