Elle Nordquist is a M.S. Student studying forest management practices and policy under Dr. Lilli Kaarakka. She attended UCSB, conducting research in wildlife conservation, botany, and tree species distribution mapping while earning a B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. She is currently interested in studying tree canopy recovery as an indicator of post-fire management practice effectiveness. This research will inform future management decisions for the Swanton Pacific Ranch and Berkeley Blodgett forest study sites.
Oliver Chamberlin is an Environmental Sciences and Management M.S. student with an emphasis on geospatial science and forestry. He earned his B.S. in Environmental Management and Protection with a minor in Biology from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in the winter of 2026. Through a joint effort between Cal Poly’s Geospatial Systems Research Lab and Fire Ecology Lab, Oliver’s thesis will focus on using remotely sensed drone imagery and LiDAR data to improve wildfire modeling.
Katie Kelly is an M.S. student studying Climate Smart Agriculture retention rates and barriers. Katie also completed her undergraduate degree at Cal Poly, earning her Bachelor of Science in Agricultural & Environmental Plant Sciences, with a concentration in Fruit & Crop and minors in both Sociology and Sustainable Agriculture. Since graduating, she has served as a GrizzlyCorps fellow for the University of California Cooperative Extension Small Farms Team, providing bilingual technical assistance to small-scale farmers on the Central Coast. She is excited to help fill a research gap she observed during her service term and inform policymakers about the barriers growers experience in maintaining practices after state grants.
Devon Garlick is an Environmental Science and Management M.S. student. She graduated from UC Davis with a degree in Environmental Sciences and Management, with a focus on natural resources. Her research areas of interest include forest science and soils, with an aim to research connections between soil moisture and forest health in the Soquel Demonstration Forest.
Giania Bogacki is a M.S. student studying Environmental Science and Management, and soil science in the Natural Resources Management and Environmental Sciences Lab. She graduated from Cal Poly Humboldt with a B.S. in Forestry focusing on forest soils and minoring in geospatial analysis. Taking her forestry, geospatial analysis, and soil science background, she is now at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo researching post-fire soil carbon impacts and mapping changes in these carbon pools within burn scars across California.
Jake Jackson is an M.S. student in the Urban Forest Lab at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where he also earned his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and a minor in Environmental Studies with coursework in Restoration Ecology. He has a background in field botany and habitat restoration in the greater San Luis Obispo County area. He currently works at the Urban Forest Institute (UFI), developing resources for urban tree growing, planting, and maintenance. He hopes to work with San Luis Obispo County process-based restoration groups to study and monitor both natural and analog beaver dam sites throughout the Salinas River watershed.
Mollie Bressler is an Environmental Sciences and Management M.S. student, focusing on soil science. She obtained her B.S. in Environmental Management and Protection with a minor in Soil Science from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 2026. Her master's will be focused on studying the properties of soils along a sequence of mineralogically variable granitic parent materials in the Sierra Nevadas.
Nell Cook is a M.S. student in the Fire Ecology Lab at Cal Poly. She is studying forest recovery and shrub biomass in post-high severity burn areas across montane California. She completed her B.S. in Forestry and Natural Resources at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo in 2023, after which she went on to work for the Stanislaus National Forest as a silviculture forester. Her research interests center around post-fire forest regeneration, reforestation challenges, and forest type conversion following wildfire.
Ben Sherman is a M.S. student in the Urban Forest Lab at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where he also earned his Bachelor of Science in Environmental Management and Protection and a minor in Restoration Ecology. He has a background with the National Park Service in field botany and ecology of the Sierra Nevada, and currently works at the Urban Forest Institute (UFI), focusing on resource development for urban tree care and urban forest composition analysis. His research uses terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) to learn more about the structure of the urban forest and improve tree selection in California cities.
Emma Allen is beginning her ESM degree in the 2026-27 school year after finishing her bachelor’s degree at Cal Poly in Environmental Management and Protection with a minor in Geographic Information Systems. Emma’s research for the ESM program is focused on groundwater hydrology and stream-aquifer interactions. The goal of the project is to monitor and map the spatial distribution of nitrate throughout the hydrologic system of the area around the agricultural wells on the Cal Poly campus. 
Eliora Wooten is an M.S. student at Cal Poly advised by Dr. Yiwen Chiu, where she received a B.S. in Environmental Management and Protection and minors in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Law. Growing up on the Central Coast, Eliora developed an appreciation for the role agriculture and community stakeholders play in natural resource conservation. Her research applies life cycle assessment (LCA) to analyze the environmental and economic performance of agricultural systems, focusing on honey production.
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