Emily Johnson, Author at Harvard Forest

Educator Spotlight: Louise Levy and 15 years of Schoolyard Data!

Posted on March 19, 2024May 6, 2025 by Emily Johnson

This quarter we are putting a spot light on Louise Levy (pictured above on the left). Louise has been in education for around 40 years, with 24 of those being in Massachusetts public schools. She has been collecting data in the Buds, Leaves, and Global Warming project for a full 15 years at Belchertown High School in Belchertown, Massachusetts primarily with 11th and 12th graders. She has also been participating in Our Changing Forests since 2015.

Louise values the Harvard Forest community of educators that she gets to meet and work with at our workshops. The community keeps fueling her passion for bringing her students outdoors and participating in our citizen science projects. Belchertown has a great site for forest studies with a large variety of trees within a short walking distance of the building, and Louise has done a lot over the years to increase the school communities comfort with getting outside for learning. Over the years, they’ve seen moose, bear, fox, star nosed moles, and salamanders galore. As Louise says, “the kids love getting outside. Oh, and the teacher does too!”

Heterogeneity research can be critical for bridging the gap between AI innovations and biomedicine

Posted on January 29, 2024April 29, 2025 by Emily Johnson

On January 19^th, Dr. Zhanshan (Sam) Ma, Harvard Forest Bullard Fellow and Dr. Aaron M. Ellison, Senior Research Fellow (Emeritus) in Ecology of Harvard University were invited to present their collaborative research work during the 2024 Harvard-MIT Symposium on “The revolutionary impact and emerging challenges of generative AI in STEM research and education.” Their presentation was titled “Heterogeneity research can be critical for bridging the gap between AI innovations and biomedicine” (https://indico.mit.edu/event/887/contributions/2768/). In addition, Dr. Ma was invited to join in the panel discussion session of the conference.

In the talk, they showcased how heterogeneity-inspired medical ecology analysis and AI technology have enabled them to propose and test novel hypotheses about human diseases, including proposing and verifying a new hypothesis about bacterial vaginosis (BV) etiology (including diversity-stability relationships), which offers credible evidence to challenge the traditional narrative about this important disease that influences as many as one-third of reproductive-aged women. Their presentation also mentioned innovative results concerning two other important human-microbiome associated diseases that are important for the health of women and children: the etiology of mastitis and risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

The primary messages from their presentation were:

Heterogeneity is an essential concept for noticing differences and is fundamental for building our most basic categories, social systems, models, and their causal explanations.

Heterogeneity is also a reality in the dynamics of natural and anthropogenic systems, including forests, BV, banking, computer chips, and software.

Harnessing heterogeneity is of critical importance for human endeavors, including bridging innovations in AI and biomedicine.

The interactions between heterogeneity and AI can be bidirectional: Heterogeneity can be sources of inspirations for computation, while we can use AI effectively to study and deal with heterogeneity.

Examples of the last message, which was particularly relevant for the symposium are:

Heterogeneity inspires better chip design and manufacture—the so-termed Composite Cores: “Pushing heterogeneity into a core” and Heterogeneous integration in the AI era

Heterogeneity inspirations for evolutionary computing—chaotic and stochastic populations in genetic algorithms (see more)

Heterogeneity inspirations for deep learning—neural heterogeneity promotes robust learning

Harnessing the research on heterogeneity for human health—quantification of tumor heterogeneity: from data acquisition to metric generation

Taming heterogeneity for public health policy-making—masking behavior & anti-pandemic policy-making with evolutionary game theory modeling (see more)

Educator Spotlight: Dr. Elisa Margarita’s Brooklyn Schoolyard Ecology Outpost

Posted on September 22, 2023May 6, 2025 by Emily Johnson

Dr. Elisa Margarita has been a part of this Schoolyard program since 2015. She collects data with her students from Brooklyn Technical High School for the Buds, Leaves, and Global Warming project in beautiful Fort Green Park in Brooklyn. She is an intrepid educator who works tirelessly to bring authentic research experiences and opportunities to her students. She is a Math for America Master Teacher and a Sloane Award for Excellence in Teaching Science and Math recipient.

Elisa was also recently recognized by Climate Advocates Voces Unidas for being an outstanding mentor. For the past two summers, Elisa has developed a series of seven outstanding lesson plans related to the Witness Tree Project. Learn more about this project and check out lessons below. Thank you Elisa for being an amazing advocate for your students and our program!

Educator Spotlight: Jason Young Joins to Continue Data Collection in Ashburnham

Posted on March 10, 2023May 6, 2025 by Emily Johnson

This year, we welcomed over 10 new educators into our Schoolyard Ecology community. One of them is Jason Young! Though this is his first year working with the Buds, Leaves, and Global Warming project he has been in education for 24 years. He works with 8th graders at Overlook Middle School in Ashburnham, MA. In their schoolyard they have a wide range of planted and naturally planted tree species from Sugar Maple to White Birch, American Beech, and Witch Hazel among others. Jason is continuing the data collection first started at Overlook by long time schoolyard collaborator JoAnn Mossman. This year his student’s found that the Sugar Maples dropped their leaves first, a big change from previous years. Jason values that his students are really doing Science and collecting data and analyzing results that are used by others. Welcome aboard Jason! We are so grateful to you and your students for ensuring the continuation of this long-term dataset.

Educator Spotlight: Mary Reed Inspires Westfield Students

Posted on March 10, 2023May 6, 2025 by Emily Johnson

Mary Reed and her 5th graders at St. Mary’s Parish School have been studying their schoolyard trees in downtown Westfield, MA for 7 years. They have ornamental apple, cherry, sweet gum and birch trees. Their leaf drop results this year were different from previous years, probably due to the drought. She is a very experienced teacher with 30 years in education. She finds real value for her students connecting to nature in a way that they have not before. Mary has lots of wonderful memories over the years in the schoolyard program, she particularly loved bringing her students to the Harvard Forest on a field trip a few years ago when her daughter was interning with our former Schoolyard Coordinator Pamela Snow.