Yifan (Flora) He is an environmental social scientist and doctoral student at the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara. She studies rural land governance in the Global South using a combination of political science theory, causal inference methods, and geospatial tools. Current projects include the relationship between rural out-migration and land governance in South America, and the social and environmental impacts of collective tenure regimes in Brazil.

Prior to UCSB, she worked as a social scientist at Conservation International. She holds a Bachelor of Social Sciences from the University of Hong Kong in 2015 and a Master of Science in conservation ecology and environmental informatics from the University of Michigan in 2017.

Grants, Awards and Distinctions:
Schmidt Family Foundation Research Accelerator Award. $8,000.

James D. Kline Fund for International Studies. $5,000.

Michael J. Connell Memorial Fund Research Award. 2022-2024. Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara. Assessing socioeconomic and environmental impacts of land use restrictions in Indigenous lands in Brazil. PI. $15,000.

Environmental Justice Research Fund. 2022. Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara. $1,000.

Individualized Professional Skills Grant. 2022.  University of California, Santa Barbara. $1,000.

Katie McMahon is a PhD student in the department of Geography. In her current research, Katie uses integrated environmental and demographic data to explore the impacts of extreme heat events on human health. She is particularly interested in the drivers of heat-related health disparities and the combined effects of concurrent environmental exposures, such as extreme heat and air pollution. Katie holds a BA in Geography and Global Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her PhD advisor is Kathy Baylis.te change.

Nic Thompson González (she/they) is a behavioral ecologist and evolutionary primatologist in the Department of Anthropology. Their work draws from evolutionary biology, animal behavior, sociology, and public health to examine the multiple links between sociality, health, and biological fitness in human and non-human primates. Their work also centers life history theory as a framework to evaluate the costs and benefits of social relationships and community dynamics throughout the life course. They co-direct the Kakamega Monkey Project, a long term field site established in 1979 that studies the behavior, biology, and demography of wild blue monkeys. They also work as an investigator at the California National Primate Research Center on rhesus macaques and co-direct the Biobehavioral Health Laboratory at UCSB.