ABRP's team of field assistants and staff in 2021
Project Directors
Susan Alberts
Susan Alberts is a Director of the project. Susan is the Robert F. Durden Distinguished Professor of Biology and Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University. She works on questions at the interface of behavior, life history, demography, and genetics.
Beth Archie
Beth Archie is a Director of the project. She is also a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at University of Notre Dame. Beth is interested in the evolution of social relationships, especially as they pertain to health and disease. She is also interested in the evolution and ecology of the microbiome.
Jenny Tung
Jenny Tung is a Director of the project. She is also the Director of the Department of Primate Behavior and Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and a Professor in the Departments of Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology at Duke University. Jenny uses genetic and genomic tools to shed light on behavioral and evolutionary questions.
Jeanne Altmann
Jeanne Altmann is Director Emerita of the project. She founded ABRP with Stuart Altmann in 1971. Dr. Altmann is currently the Eugene Higgins Professor Emerita and a Senior Scholar in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. She is interested in a range of questions in ecology, physiology, and evolution.
Senior field team
Raphael Mututua
Raphael Mututua is ABRP's most experienced Senior Observer and is our Project Manager in Amboseli. He has been working for the project since 1981 and is responsible for the day-to-day management of our data collection and other activities at our field site.
Kinyua Warutere
Kinyua Warutere is the second-most experienced Senior Observer and is our Assistant Project Manager. He has been with the project since 1996.
Long'ida Siodi
Long'ida Siodi started working as a Senior Observer in 2019. He has been with the project since 2009.
Meet the Researchers from Grand Passage Media Inc. by George Flak, Caitlin Starowicz and Mark Starowicz on Vimeo.
Junior field team
Gideon Marinka
Gideon Marinka helps to manage our fleet of vehicles and is an assistant to the senior field team. He has been with the project since 1991.
Benard Oyath
Benard Ochieng’ Oyath is an assistant to the senior field team. He is responsible for many computer-related tasks in our field camp in Amboseli. He has been with the project since 2009.
Alex Meloimet
Alex Meloimet is the newest member of the Junior Field Team. He is an assistant to the senior field team.
Camp support team
Nkii Lenkai
Nkii Lenkai cooks and provides essential camp maintenance and support.
Sakimba Mpute
Sakimba Mpute is support staff.
Moonyoi Parstau
Moonyoi Parstau is support staff.
Nairobi-based staff and collaborators
Tim Wango
Tim Wango manages the hormone lab at the University of Nairobi and provides logistical support with permit applications, shipping samples, and several other items in Nairobi.
Vivian Oudu
Vivian assists in preparing fecal samples for hormone analysis, and helps Tim with logistical support in Nairobi.
Mercy Akinyi
Mercy Akinyi is a veterinarian and research scientist in Kenya. Her research interests are focused on quantifying disease prevalence and understanding the sources of variance in disease risk among natural populations of non-human primates.
US support staff
Karl Pinc
Karl helped design and implement our online, long-term database called BABASE. Karl is involved with the day-to-day maintenance of the site, as well as designing new data tables and functions for analyzing the data.
Niki Learn
Niki is responsible for uploading and maintaining the Princeton portion of BABASE. She primarily handles data pertaining to female baboons, as well as weather data and initial proofing of most data as it arrives from the field team in Kenya.
Jake Gordon
Jake maintains the Duke portion of BABASE. His work involves archiving behavioral data and male ranks, as well as keeping records of ABRP's archives of tissues, DNA, and RNA. He used to work in the Alberts lab as a technician, doing a variety of genetics-related projects, and still occasionally helps in that regard.
Amy Mofield
Amy is the Grants and Contracts Administrator for the Duke grants, but she also serves as the Project Coordinator, working under Susan Alberts. She oversees accounting and personnel aspects of the project, working closely with the local Kenyan staff. She helps coordinate efforts between the project directors, US support staff, and local Kenyan staff to ensure that the needs of the project are met.
Laurence Gesquiere
Laurence helps to manage the hormone research at in the Alberts Lab at Duke University and runs the hormone assay lab. She is interested in hormonal and behavioral changes at puberty and using fecal glucocorticoids to measure environmental stress.
Tawni Voyles
Tawni is a technician in the Tung Lab at Duke University. She is involved in developing and implementing genomics protocols associated with our research on baboons.
David Jansen
David is the lab manager/research scientist in the Archie lab at Notre Dame University. He mainly works on the analysis of the parasite data. He also maintains this webpage and the ABRP genomics public portal.
Emeritus
Serah Sayialel
Serah Sayialel was our second in command with respect to managing our research in the field. She was a field assistant with the project from 1989 until her retirement in 2019.
