Enquye Negash received her PhD from the George Washington University where she studied woody vegetation cover in modern African ecosystems to better understand the environmental context of human evolution. Her research relies on using stable isotopes, paleobotanical methods, and spatial analysis to study vegetation in modern ecosystems, and to reconstruct mammalian diet and paleoenvironments in the Pliocene and Pleistocene. As a Climate School  Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University, Enquye is focusing on the application of molecular biomarkers to further investigate vegetation structure in African ecosystems. 

Bryce Mitsunaga is an organic and carbonate isotope geochemist who studies Earth's thousand- to million-year climate cycles, specifically how changes in ocean temperatures and circulation drive terrestrial hydrology (e.g., monsoons) and ecology. His current research involves how all of the above interact with fire and the human settlement of North Africa as well as the terrestrial Ibero-African response to major climatic and tectonic events (the Messinian Salinity Crisis, mid-Pleistocene transition, etc.). He comes to the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard via a PhD at Brown University.

Jonathan Smolen is a chemist with expertise in organic molecular and isotopic analyses, studying signatures of geological, climatic, and biological interactions down to the atomic level. Jon is particularly interested in understanding the mechanisms controlling the relationship between climate and fire dynamics of the past. He comes from the University of Connecticut, where he studied geochemical records of this relationship preserved within stalagmites spanning the last deglaciation. He also works on modeling the clay mineral–fluid–organic matter interface and how it contributes to our preserved geological record. 

Ruth Tweedy is an EPS graduate student at Harvard University studying the terrestrial paleoecology of eastern Africa. Currently, she is focusing on developing organic biomarker proxies to study the expansion of grasslands in the Miocene. Ruth received her bachelor's degree from MIT, where she was a double major in Chemistry and Earth, Atmospheric & Planetary Science with a humanities concentration in Archaeology. She hopes her PhD will contribute to our understanding of how climate, vegetation, and human evolution intersect!

Eleanor Pereboom is a graduate student in Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. She is interested in the relationships between climate change, ecological change, fire dynamics, and human activity. Her research is focused on using biomarkers to develop a stronger understanding of ancient fire regimes and early human fire use. She received her bachelor’s degrees from Brown University (Sc.B. Environmental Science) and Rhode Island School of Design (BFA Ceramics). Before coming to Harvard, Eleanor worked as a research assistant in James Russell’s paleoclimate & paleoecology lab at Brown University.

Frank Farley is a Research Assistant I in the Uno Lab.  After an educational background in physics and chemistry, he worked for 25 years in Harvard biology labs, mostly at the Harvard Medical School.  He worked in a yeast, a mouse, and a stem cell lab, and then a DNA sequencing core facility.  He is happy to be back in a lab where he supports a myriad of terrestrial paleoecology research projects.

Cassandra Swartz, is an undergraduate Lab Assistant who helps process samples for biomarker analysis. She is concentrating in Environmental Science and Public Policy, with a secondary in History and a citation in Portuguese at Harvard University on a Pre-Law track. She served as the Internal Programs Director of Harvard Undergraduate Women in Business, and currently is Co-Director of Harvard Undergraduate Clean Energy Group’s Innovation initiative. 

Natalia de los Rios is a undergraduate researcher who helps process samples for biomarker analysis. She is a freshman at Harvard College from Virginia Beach, VA, and is interested in pursing a special concentration in Sustainable Food Systems. She is fascinated by the study of ancient climactic phenomena to address the climate challenges we currently face. Natalia is the founder and co-director of Food Rescue US - Virginia Beach and continues to work in the realm of food insecurity and food waste in Cambridge as a volunteer at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter and a board member of Harvard Undergraduates Plant-Based and the Havard Climate Coalition.

Arya Prasad, is an undergraduate Lab Assistant who helps process samples for biomarker analysis. She is a first year at Harvard College from New York who is hoping to concentrate in Environmental Science and Public Policy with a secondary in Education. Arya looks forward to learning more about terrestrial paleoclimatology at the Uno Lab. Outside of the lab, she is passionate about Bollywood dance, education policy, and wildlife.