Harvard Forest is pleased to announce the 2025-2026 Charles Bullard Fellows in Forest Research. The purpose of this Fellowship program, established in 1962, is to support advanced research and study by persons who show promise of making important contributions, either as scholars or administrators, to forestry defined in its broadest sense as the human use and study of forested environments.
2025-2026 Fellows
A lecturer in the Department of Plant Science and Biotechnology at the University of Jos, Nigeria, Iveren Abiem holds a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. Her research focuses on understanding the drivers of montane forest diversity and carbon storage. She is interested in studying the relationship between forests and Indigenous communities of mountain areas in Africa. In 2022, Iveren was awarded the Sub-Saharan Africa L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science Young Talents prize.
During her five-month fellowship at Harvard Forest, she will analyze nine years of data on trees, shrubs, and liana seedlings to study seedling recruitment and growth in a montane forest ecosystem. Her primary collaborator at Harvard Forest will be Jackie Matthes.
Kelly Aho, an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University, specializes in aquatic biogeochemistry and ecology. Holding a Ph.D. from Yale University, she focuses on carbon and nitrogen cycling in freshwater ecosystems, particularly studying greenhouse gas emissions from streams and rivers, and previously worked as a postdoc at the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON).
During her two-month fellowship at Harvard, she will collaborate with Jackie Matthes to investigate lateral carbon “leaks” from terrestrial ecosystems into streams, analyzing the fate of this carbon and its potential to be emitted to the atmosphere from inland waters.
Lisa Brooks, the Winthrop H. Smith 1916 Professor of American Studies and English at Amherst College, is researching the environmental history of eastern coyotes and beaver-constructed wetlands in the northeast. Her interdisciplinary approach combines archival research, traditional ecological knowledge, tracking, and trail camera observation.
During her nine-month fellowship at Harvard Forest, Brooks will conduct historical research in the Harvard Forest Archives, particularly in The History of Wildlife in Massachusetts (1632–1999) collection, while also tracking coyotes and observing beaver habitats. Brooks earned her Ph.D. in English from Cornell University and received the prestigious Bancroft Prize for American History and Diplomacy in 2019. Her primary Harvard Forest collaborators will be Clarisse Hart and Neil Pederson.
nia holley, a Nipmuc community organizer and artist, aims to reshape how Indigenous communities engage with their homelands and how broader audiences understand the relationship between people and the land. With a background in Fine Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Tufts University, she integrates art and scholarship to bridge historical and contemporary research. holley is a 2020 recipient of the Radical Imagination for Racial Justice grant and recently presented a solo exhibition, Nummeehquantamumun, at the Concord Museum in 2024.
During her three-month fellowship, she will collaborate with Clarisse Hart to expand the narrative of Harvard Forest’s Fisher Museum, seeking to juxtapose oral histories, traditional stories, and artistic representations to foster a deeper understanding of the interconnections between ecosystems and cultural heritage.
Daniel Johnson specializes in using forest ecology and demography to address knowledge gaps about how forests function and respond to change. He earned his Ph.D. in Biology from Indiana University and is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Florida, as well as a principal investigator for two Smithsonian Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO) plots.
During his nine-month Bullard Fellowship, Johnson will analyze and report on the results of a four-year effort to connect annual tree health and mortality to remote sensing imagery at the Harvard Forest ForestGEO plot and four other ForestGEO plots.
An artist with a passion for interdisciplinary collaboration, Nancy Lowe focuses on the intersection of art and science, particularly in field research settings. Holding a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she leads the Ecotones network for arts at field stations and marine labs through OBFS.org.
During her three-month fellowship at Harvard Forest, Lowe will create visual art inspired by complex systems and emergent phenomena, host visiting artists to collaborate with Harvard Forest researchers, and develop best practices for integrating the arts into biological field stations.
Adam Martin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences, and the University of Toronto Scarborough. He is especially interested in research that evaluates plant- and ecosystem responses to environmental change, with a specific focus on forests and agroecosystems. In both of these areas, his research aims to better understand how plants (specifically crops and trees) respond to environmental stressors including changes in temperature, water availability, and atmospheric CO2. Based on this, his research aims to better understand and predict 1) how critical ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration and biodiversity, are expected to change in the future, and 2) how different management systems might mitigate these changes.
During his Bullard Fellowship, Adam will conduct research that uses data from a number of large forest inventory research sites—including those at Harvard Forest and in his home province of Ontario—in order to improve and refine estimates of carbon storage in forests. More details on his research and lab group can be viewed here.
A Senior Scientist at the Institute of Forest Sciences (ICIFOR) INIA-CSIC, Dario Martin-Benito investigates how climate and environmental factors influence forest ecosystem dynamics. He holds a Ph.D. in Forest Engineering from the Technical University of Madrid (UPM) and has been both a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and a Marie-Curie postdoctoral fellow at ETH Zurich.
During his eight-month fellowship at Harvard Forest, Martin-Benito will study carbon retention times in Northeastern U.S. forests and the impact of disturbances mainly using an extensive network of dendroecological plots, working closely with Harvard Forest Senior Ecologist Neil Pederson.
Andrew Reinmann, Associate Professor at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center and also at Hunter College, is an ecosystem/environmental ecologist specializing in soil-plant-atmosphere interactions and terrestrial biogeochemistry across a continuum of human-modified ecosystems. He earned his Ph.D. in Biology from Boston University and is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award.
Over six months at Harvard, he will collaborate across Harvard Forest’s research areas to improve understanding of environmental controls on tree growth by integrating high-resolution tree growth data from the Climate Interactions with Forest Fragmentation (CLIFF) experiment with micrometeorological, weather, and eddy flux data. His primary collaborators are Jonathan Thompson and Jackie Matthes. More information on the research conducted in the Reinmann Lab can be found here.
James Rivers, an Associate Professor of Wildlife Ecology at Oregon State University, leads the Forest Animal Ecology Lab and undertakes research focused on the behavioral and demographic responses of animals to forest management and environmental change. He earned his Ph.D. in ecology and evolution from the University of California, Santa Barbara, is a Fellow of the American Ornithological Society, and currently serves as Senior Editor for Ornithology and Associated Editor for Journal of Forestry.
During his three-month fellowship at Harvard Forest, he will investigate the reproductive ecology of native solitary bees, specifically how it is influenced by disturbance intensity, forest management practices, and human-driven environmental change.
Erica Smithwick, a Distinguished Professor of Geography and Ecology at Penn State University, specializes in wildfire ecology, landscape ecology, climate change, and biogeochemistry. She holds a Ph.D. in Forest Science from Oregon State University. At Penn State, she is the Director of the Penn State Climate Consortium and the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute. She has many past and ongoing projects in Africa (Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, and Zambia) and was a Fulbright Scholar in South Africa.
During her eight-month fellowship at Harvard Forest, she will collaborate with Jonathan Thompson to synthesize data and field studies to better understand wildfire risk and carbon storage in eastern temperate forests under future climate change.
Fellows are supported by an endowment named after the benefactor Charles Bullard. While in residence at Harvard, Fellows interact with faculty and students, give seminars, participate in conferences and symposia and avail themselves of the University’s great research resources. Applications are accepted beginning in August for Bullard Fellowships for the following year.
Describing the role of Bullard Fellows at Harvard, Missy Holbrook, Director of the Harvard Forest, explains, “Bullard Fellows are a vital and dynamic part of the Harvard Forest community. Their work is propelled by the important role forests play in the carbon cycle, in sustaining biodiversity, and in supporting human livelihoods. Over the past fifty years, Bullard collaborations have forged new paths of inquiry here at Harvard Forest and in nearly every corner of Harvard University. We look forward to welcoming a new cohort of Bullard Fellows who will work with us to advance our understanding of how forests can contribute to solving some of humanity’s most pressing environmental challenges.”