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Caroline A.E. StrömbergPrincipal Investigator
Estella B. Leopold Professor of Biology & Curator of Paleobotany Adjunct Professor, Earth and Space Sciences Caroline is a paleobotanist and paleoecologist interested in how plants have shaped Earth’s ecosystems through time. She is fascinated by evolution, especially how it is influenced by ecology. There is a special place in her heart for the most awesome of all plants: grasses. caestrom@uw.edu | CV | Google Scholar | @caestromberg |
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Chris SchillerPostdoctoral Researcher, Biology
Chris is a paleoecologist who uses fossil pollen to study how ancient vegetation responded to changing climate and disturbance, with a particular focus on how plants were impacted by volcanic eruptions. Before switching to terrestrial ecosystems, Chris received a BS in geology from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology where he worked with Christina Belanger on foraminifera assemblages from the Gulf of Alaska. He completed his PhD dissertation working in Cathy Whitlock’s paleoecology lab at Montana State University on the Quaternary vegetation history of Yellowstone National Park. Using high-resolution pollen, microcharcoal, and X-ray fluorescence analyses, he explored how the ecosystem was impacted by postglacial volcanic and hydrothermal activity. At UW, Chris is applying similar methods to study the mechanisms of vegetation change—climate change vs. volcanic disturbance—in the Middle Miocene of the Pacific Northwest. cschill2@uw.edu | CV | Website |
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Tim GallaherVisiting Scholar, UW (formerly Postdoctoral Researcher in the lab 2016-2020)
Curator of Botany, Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Honolulu, HI Tim is a plant systematist and anatomist focused on understanding the evolutionary and biogeographical history of widespread angiosperm lineages, particularly Poaceae and Pandanaceae, and the assembly of the tropical Indo-Pacific coastal strand community. He received a Bachelor of Business Administration and an MS and PhD (Botany) from the University of Hawaii, Manoa. His graduate research concerned the systematics, phytogeography, and ecological interactions of the Pandanaceae and the interactions of coastal vegetation and tsunami waves and phytogeography of the Vernonieae tribe (Asteraceae). Tim did a postdoc in Lynn Clark’s lab at Iowa State University where he worked on the evolution of grass leaf anatomy and morphology. At UW, both as a postdoctoral researcher and currently, he leads a team of undergraduate/postgraduate researchers conducting 3D visualization, 3D printing and geometric morphometric analysis of grass silica short cell (GSSC) phytoliths across the Poaceae. At the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, he is working hard to describe the Plants of Hawai'i. timothy.gallaher@bishopmuseum.org | CV | Website |
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Paige Wilson DeibelPaleobotany Collections and Lab Manager, Burke Museum
Paige is originally from the northeast and received her BA from Dartmouth College in 2014. She studies climate, environment, and vegetation during the Late Cretaceous and early Paleogene as recorded in the Hell Creek area, MT, with special focus on the K-Pg mass extinction event. She received her PhD from UW in 2022, coadvised by UW vertebrate paleontologist, Greg Wilson. Paige's current role is Lab Manager of the Burke and Biology Paleobotany lab spaces as well as Collections Manager of the Burke's 70k+ plant fossil collection. wilsonp2@uw.edu | CV | Website | @waigepilson |
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Alex LoweGraduate Student, Biology
Alex is a paleobotanist who is interested in dominant controls on the ecology of plant communities over the Cenozoic. Alex got a BS in geology from the University of Utah, while working in paleontology collections at the Natural History Museum of Utah. His undergraduate research in the SPATIAL lab consisted of reconstructing the paleoclimate of now Big Bend National Park, TX using paleosol geochemistry, and he had internships in two stable isotope labs. He has a MS from Brandon University in Canada, having worked in David Greenwood’s lab to characterize the lithostratigraphy and ancient plant community ecology of the early Eocene McAbee Fossil Beds. At UW, Alex hopes to tease out the response of plant community ecology in the Pacific Northwest to the mid-Miocene climatic optimum within a highly resolved temporal framework. loweaj01@uw.edu | CV | Website |
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Elena StilesGraduate Student, Biology
Elena is originally from Bogotá, Colombia, where she got her BS in Geosciences at the Universidad de Los Andes. Her undergraduate research focused on marine paleoecological reconstructions using Miocene-Pliocene trace fossil assemblages in Panama at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). She moved from studying marine to terrestrial ecosystems for her MS in Geosciences at Penn State in Peter Wilf’s Paleobotany Lab. Her MS work sought to quantify and describe floral turnover across the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction in Argentine Patagonia, to better understand how this event affected Southern Hemisphere ecosystems. In the Stromberg Lab, Elena hopes to use a combination of plant micro and macrofossils to reconstruct Miocene landscapes in the Colombian Andes and explore the relationship between mountain building, climate change, and floral communities for the last 20 million years. estiles@uw.edu | CV | Website |
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Graduate Student, ESS
Ben is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area and received a BA in Geology from Colorado College in 2019. His undergraduate research focused on the earliest Cenozoic of Colorado, where he investigated changes in plant communities, climate, and the carbon cycle in the aftermath of the K-Pg mass extinction event. After graduating, he stuck around Colorado Springs to work for his alma mater, where he ran field trips and taught labs for the geology department. After a brief early-COVID stint in paleontological consulting, he moved to DC to work for the Smithsonian’s Fossil Atmospheres Project. There, he grew ginkgo trees in elevated CO2 to develop and refine proxies for past atmospheric composition. He arrived at UW in 2022, where he is researching the dynamics of the expansion of C4-dominated grassland ecosystems across Australia. blloyd96@uw.edu | CV | Website |
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Postgraduate ResearchersBrielle Canares
Francisco Nares Yoshimi Hata Undergraduate ResearchersJenny Jiang
Juan Torres Taylor Billings Hannah Goetz Haley Stephens Ryan Nguyen Alexander Reyna Payton Danosky Garrett Ruth Anna Yee Molly Scofield Atlas Lee Clara Hansen Beyza Cardakli Chiara Smythies Lila Rubin Abby Riley Ziqi Xu Hannah Goetz Saila Wing Kit Heath Mira Anders Sophia Ronan Rosemary Randall Jaime Zhang Jason Chinn Josephine Meier V Maslyak Merrick Studer Burke Leaf Prepper Volunteers
Other UW PaleobotanistsEstella B. Leopold
Professor Emeritus, Biology Department Burke Museum Research Associate Rick Dillhoff Evolving Earth Foundation Burke Museum Research Associate Tad Dillhoff Evolving Earth Foundation Burke Museum Research Associate Don Hopkins Volunteer, Burke Museum Paul Kester Burke Museum Research Associate |
Lab AlumniFormer Graduate Students
Former Postdoctoral Researchers
Former Visiting Graduate Students
Venanzio Munyaka (PhD student; Baylor University) (2022)
Mariam Bundala (PhD student; U Calgary) (2022) Rosalie Hermans (PhD student; Art studies and Archaeology; Free University of Brussels; Evere, Belgium) (2021-2022) Kristyna Hoskova (PhD student; Department of Botany; Charles University; Prague, Czechia) (2022) Former Undergraduate Researchers
Former Postgraduate Researchers
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