Kristin Algmin
Kristin joined the database team in April 2000 and started working on data entry and insect curation aspects of the therevid PEET project. She has also became involved with digital photography of type specimens, proofing records in Mandala, and webpage design and maintenance.
She graduated in May 2001 in biology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Nick Henry
Erin R. Leslie
Erin Leslie graduated in May 1996 with a major in Ecology, Ethology, and Evolution and a minor in Spanish from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She worked on the input of insect specimen label data and of reprint information into the suite of databases for this project from July 1995-May 1996. Working with the project since its inception [read: guinea pig], she provided valuable feedback in the design and ease of use of the databases.
Jamie Bender
Jamie Bender graduated in December 1997 in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, with a biology specialization, in the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She worked fall 1995 and spring 1996 with data input of the collections of Australian Therevidae, and provided valuable feedback (read: another guinea pig) for the workings of the databases. Jamie’s primary interest is in tropical ecology and she spent the summer of 1995 in Costa Rica and the summer of 1996 working with the Field Museum in Chicago on bat ecology.
Shelly Cook
Shelly Cook graduated from the University of Illinois in December 1996 as a Biology major. She went on to enter medical school at the University of Illinois. She worked on data input and training of new student workers from May through September 1996.
Traci Gustafson
Traci Gustafson graduated in December 1996 as a biology major from the University of Illinois. She was employed on the Riverwatch program in Quincy, IL but has since married and moved to the Chicago area. She worked on the databases from May through August 1996.
Ann Ramsey
Ann Ramsey began working on data capture for the therevid databases in August 1996, working through November 1996. She was a student in Liberal Arts & Sciences’ Department of Humanities at the University of Illinois, concentrating on the history and philosophy of science. Her research interests included restoration of native Illinois plant and animal species on her farm in Rochester, IL. She was also a certified Master Gardener through the University of Illinois Agricultural Extension Service and worked as an Agricultural Gardener in the Plant Sciences Laboratory Greenhouses for the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences.
Johnson Zeledon
Johnson Zeledon is a graduate of the Pan American School of Agriculture in Zamorano, Honduras. He came to the University of Illinois in the fall of 1996 to gain experience with various ongoing research projects, including ours on the systematics of the Therevidae. He worked on the data input team from October 1996 through January 1997, surviving snow, ice, winds, and temperatures of minus 22 degrees C.
He went on to study at Mississippi State University pursuing a graduate degree in Entomology under Dr. Henry Petrie, conducting research in Nicaragua.
Sandy Kawanaka
Hiroko Sandy Kawanaka graduated in Psychology in the School of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Illinois in May 1997. She started working on the data input relay team in the fall of 1996.
Stephanie Strothoff
Stephanie Strothof worked on the database team for two months at the end of 1997 before graduating from the University of Illinois with a B.S. in Biology.
Robert Pollok
Bob Pollok is part of the Class of 2000 working on a bachelor’s degree in management information systems at Southern Illinois University (SIU). The opportunity arose to hire him to work on checking and inputting specimen information on the Ozodiceromyia during the summer of 1997. Although Bob went back to SIU for the fall semester, he returned during school holidays in fall 1997 and spring 1998 to work with us again.
In the fall of 1998, he took the expertise gained working with our project to work with the Stotlers on their PEET project databases at SIU.
Jessica Adams
Jessica graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in May 1998. She joined our team of database workers in the summer of 1997 and continued working with us during the school year as time permitted from her studies and primary job responsibilities of aphid flight and vision-related research with visiting professor, Dr. Alberto Fereres. Jessica ran in the Chicago Marathon in October 1997 and will be pursuing a career in dentistry at the University of Chicago in the fall of 1998.
Mona Abou-Batnin
Mona was an exchange student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois from Princess Sumaya University in Amman, Jordan. She returned home for a final year of studies before graduating. She joined our database crew in the spring of 1998 and used her engineering expertise to help give the therevid PEET poster sound to annotate the workings of our project. The poster debuted at the 2nd NSF-PEET meeting in Woods Hole, MA in March 1998.
Dyanna Gregory
Dyanna was a student at the University of Illinois with a dual major in microbiology and community health. She started working with the database crew in the spring of 1998 and continued working during the summer.
Sarah Kastelic
Sarah was a junior in Anthropology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign when she joined our team of database workers in the fall of 1997. She continued working with us in the fall of 1998.
Andrea Gavurnik
Ms. Gavurnik graduated in May 1999 with a B.S. in Biology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She began working with the database group on the therevid PEET project at the end of January 1997. She rejoined the team in the summer of 1998 with a 7-week hiatus to the Cocoa Beach NASA facility as an intern in their space biology program.
Mary Grabowski
Mary joined the database team in May 1998.
Jessica Bickham
Ms. Bickham graduated in May 1999 with a B.S. degree in Cell and Structural Biology from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She started graduate school at the University of California-Santa Barbara.
She began working with the database group on the therevid PEET project in February 1997 and worked through the fall of 1997; she rejoined the team in the fall of 1998.
Luke Harvey
Mr. Harvey joined our therevid PEET database team in May 1999, with a brief hiatus in Japan, and was employed until the end of 1999. His major at UIUC was bioengineering.
Jill Poffenbarger
Joe Dunlop
Joe joined the database team in the fall of 1998. He graduated with a B.S. degree in Psychology at the University of Illinois in May 2000.
Amanda Buck, Joe Dunlop, J. Marie Metz, and Gail Kampmeier presented a poster at the 1999 Entomological Society of America meetings in Atlanta, GA entitled: “Specimen Label Eccentricities from Antiquity to the Present.”
Katerina Wright
Katie graduated in May 2000 with a B.S. degree in Management Information Systems from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She began working with the database group on the therevid PEET project in October 1998.
Theresa Tran
Theresa joined the database team in March 2000. At the time she was a junior majoring in entomology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign . She is interested in forensic entomology.
She left the database team on 23 June to go work on an independent and funded project on bees with Gene Robinson’s lab at UIUC.
Yiching Lin
Yiching Lin is a graduate student with Dr. Carol Augspurger in the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Illinois. She began working with the therevid PEET database team in May 2000 and will work through the summer before returning to a teaching assistantship at the University.
Amanda Buck
Amanda joined the database team in May 1998. She graduated in 2001 with a degree in Actuarial Science at the University of Illinois.
She became our resident RangeMapper™ expert and plotted distributions of specimens from information exported from MANDALA. Her distribution maps may be found in the keys to the species of Chromolepida, Megalinga, and Nebritus.
Amanda, Joe Dunlop, J. Marie Metz, and Gail Kampmeier presented a poster at the 1999 Entomological Society of America meetings in Atlanta, GA entitled: “Specimen Label Eccentricities from Antiquity to the Present.” It was such a hit that it was also presented at the National Science Foundation PEET III meeting at the Smithsonian Institution in March 2000.
Kate Marlin
Kate Marlin joined the database team in June 2001, working throughout the summer on the backlog of museum specimens to be entered in Mandala.
Abbie Franzen
Victoria Wittig
Victoria Wittig joined the database team in August 2001, working part time during the semester to enter therevid specimen information in Mandala. She was a senior in the Department of Natural Resources & Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois, and has pursued graduate studies here in global climate change in forest environments.
Melissa Calvillo
Melissa Calvillo transferred from Knox College and started at the University of Illinois in the summer of 2000, majoring in psychology. She graduated in the spring of 2002.
She began working with the database team in June 2000 and took on the responsibility of classifying the therevid scientific literature in Mandala. She also worked with the Allerton Biodiversity Blitz data, helping wrap up that project with the support of the Illinois Natural History Survey.
Dmitry Svistyulya
Dmitry joined the Therevid PEET database team in the summer of 2001 while on break from studies in computer science and graphic design at the University of Illinois Chicago. He returned during holiday breaks to work with the team during the school year.
Brad Metz
Brad joined the database team in the summer of 2003 between undergraduate and graduate school. In addition to data entry and work with illustrations, Brad pinned specimens for the Irwin lab. In 2002 he received a B.S. degree in Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Brad is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Entomology at Texas A&M.
Claire Montgomery
Claire Montgomery joined the database team in June 2001, working throughout the summer on the backlog of museum specimens to be entered in Mandala. She continued part-time during the school year.
Heather Lanford
Heather Lanford joined the database team in November 2001, working part time during the semester to enter therevid specimen information in Mandala.
Scott Fernsler
Scott Fernsler began working with the therevid PEET project in August 2003 and worked for a year with the project until entering graduate school in Art Education at UIUC, where he is pursuing a Master’s degree. He also returned to work part-time with the project during the summer of 2005.
Sarah Manthey
Sarah Manthey was a junior in the Horticulture program at UIUC when she started working with the therevid PEET project in January 2004. She worked with the project until the Spring of 2005.
Rebekah Kunkel
Rebekah began working part-time for the database team in January 2004. She is majoring in Molecular and Cellular Biology with an emphasis in Microbiology. She plans to pursue a graduate degree in public health and epidemiology after completing her studies at the University of Illinois.
Klara Kim
Klara Kim worked with the therevid PEET project in the summer of 2006. She has a degree in English Literature from UIUC and is currently a graduate student in Library and Information Science. She has a feeling that her work at the lab will give her a headstart in understanding the records management portion of her archives class. Klara is fond of all insects, so her work with the therevid PEET project was a good match all around!
Evan Smith
Evan Smith was a junior at Earlham College in Indiana when he joined the therevid team, majoring in Geology and Japanese. He began work in May 1999 for the summer and has worked on school breaks since then. He sorted the backlog of alcohol samples, pulling out taxonomic groups of interest to ours and other PEET projects.