People

Annie Beadle is a Master’s student in the Warnell School of Forestry & Natural Resources at the University of Georgia. She graduated from the University of Tennessee in 2021 with a B.S. in Wildlife and Fisheries Science. She has worked with large mammals across the eastern United States on projects managing black bears in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, conducting black bear den surveys with Georgia DNR, and working to estimate grey wolf abundance in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Her research interests include carnivore ecology, human-wildlife interactions, and spatial ecology. Her research focuses on the efficacy of aerial removal as a management strategy for wild pigs.. 

Aidan Branney is a Ph.D. student in the Beasley Lab at the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory and the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. Originally from the Los Angeles area, Aidan pursued his undergrad at Humboldt State University and earned his B.S. in Wildlife Conservation Biology with a minor in Scientific Diving in 2018. During his undergrad, he completed an REU at Boise State University on burrowing owl ecology funded through the NSF. After graduation he worked for Cornell University studying red-back fairy wren behavior in Australia, the National Park Service furthering urban wildlife research in the Santa Monica Mountains, and the University of Washington collecting data for the Washington Predator Prey Project on bobcats and coyotes. In Fall 2020, he began his Masters’ program at the Caesar Kleberg Wildlife Research Institute at Texas A&M University-Kingsville. His Masters’ thesis centered around bobcat spatial ecology and carnivore community occurrence in the working lands of Southern Texas. While completing his Masters’ he was also heavily involved in the monitoring and capture efforts of both white-tailed deer and ocelots on participating private ranches. After successfully defending his thesis in Fall 2022, he earned his M.Sc. in Range and Wildlife Management. He then stayed briefly on in Texas as the East Foundation’s Ocelot Research Assistant and was responsible for independently setting and monitoring traps for ocelot captures for ongoing research on the ranch from Winter-Spring 2023. Upon returning to California, he recently served as the Large Carnivore Scientific Aid at CDFW and furthered research, monitoring, and capture efforts in the Mountain Lion and Gray Wolf research programs. His doctoral research at UGA will primarily focus on the movement/ spatial ecology of large carnivores and investigate the predator-prey dynamics in the Greater Etosha landscape of Namibia.

Madeline Melton is a Ph.D. student in the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Georgia. She graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in 2016 with a B.S. in Animal Sciences and a minor in Spanish and from the University of Georgia in 2024 with an M.S. in Wildlife Science. She has worked on a variety of projects across the United States focusing on bobcat spatial ecology, elk calf and mule deer fawn survival, fisher monitoring and black-tailed deer migration. She lived in Africa for 3.5 years where she was a research manager working for an NGO studying carnivores in Malawi, specifically urban spotted hyenas, and a field manager for the Simien Mountains Gelada Research project researching the behavior, ecology, and endocrinology of gelada monkeys in the Ethiopian Highlands. Previously, she was a research technician with the Beasley Lab on a project focusing on the efficacy of lure choice in wild pigs in Texas and South Carolina and is currently using the dataset to investigate carnivore lure selection in the same regions. Maddie is interested in wildlife urbanization, carnivore ecology, and human-wildlife coexistence. Her graduate research will focus on the effects of human settlements and livestock on carnivore movement and occupancy in the greater Etosha landscape in northern Namibia. 

Victoria Mulyuu is a Master’s student in Natural Resources Management at the Namibia University of Science and Technology. She obtained a Bachelor of Natural Resources Management Honours degree with research examining trends of human–carnivore conflict in communal conservancies along the northern periphery of Etosha National Park, Namibia. Her professional background includes a six-month internship in the Herpetology Department at the National Museum of Namibia and a year as a field technician at the Ongava Research Centre, where she gained extensive experience in field-based wildlife research and monitoring. For her master’s thesis, Victoria is working in collaboration with the Ongava Research Centre, the AfriCat Foundation, and the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on evaluating the effectiveness of artificial scent lures in enhancing detection rates and individual identification of African carnivores in camera trapping. This work not only contributes to advancing non-invasive survey techniques for elusive species such as leopards and brown hyaenas but also provides insights into improving long-term carnivore monitoring and conservation efforts in Africa.

Rohan Wadhwa is a Ph.D. student in the Beasley Lab at the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. He holds an M.S. degree in Forest and Nature Conservation from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, where his thesis focused on the population dynamics of brown hyenas, spotted hyenas, and leopards. Following his graduate studies, he worked as a GIS Field Officer with Rewilding Europe, contributing to the European bison reintroduction efforts in Romania. Returning to the African continent, he managed applied research programs for a carnivore research NGO in Malawi, focusing on spotted hyenas in urban and peri-urban habitats and their interactions with people. Now affiliated with the Botswana Predator Conservation Program (BPC), he conducts research and coordinates the development of a LoRaWAN wireless network for animal tracking in the Okavango Delta. Rohan's research interests lie in the spatial and behavioral ecology of carnivores and the dynamics of human-wildlife coexistence. His doctoral work, in affiliation with BPC, will investigate resource selection by spotted hyenas across behavioral states and land-use types, and evaluate the potential of novel olfactory deterrents to influence their behavior and space use.

Sydney Brewer is a research professional for the Beasley lab working on eradicating wild pigs from Blackbeard Island National Wildlife Refuge. She graduated from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln in 2021 with a B.S. in Fisheries & Wildlife and from UGA in 2025 with an M.S. in Wildlife Sciences. As an undergraduate, she researched spatial and temporal interactions between deer and cattle. After she graduated, she worked for the Georgia DNR as a sea turtle technician and then for the West Virginia DNR as a deer project technician. Her MS research investigated fine-scale movement ecology of wild pigs and their response to different baits and lures. Her research interests include wildlife conservation and management, spatial ecology, human-wildlife interactions, and wildlife disease. 

Caitlin Kupferman is the Research Coordinator for the Beasley Lab and provides management and support for the many ongoing projects within the lab. She is also currently pursuing her Ph.D. in the Beasley Lab researching anthropogenic effects on wildlife in Fukushima, Japan. 

Jessy Patterson is a postdoctoral researcher in the Beasley Lab. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia where she examined the effects of tourism pressure on African mammal behavior, movement, and spatial ecology. She also investigated African carnivore diets to understand how predators interact with livestock and the broader landscape in areas of high human-carnivore conflict. She graduated from Georgia College with her B.S. and M.S. in Biological Sciences, primarily focusing on recreating the environment and habitat of the Chihuahuan Desert during the late Pleistocene based on the identification of lizard fossils. After graduation, she taught biology, anatomy and physiology, and ecology at the university level while conducting research and mentoring undergraduate students. Her research has focused on microhabitat abiotic variables and salamander distribution, ophidiomycosis in north Georgia snake populations, the effects of insecticide exposure on amphibian growth and development, groundhog ecology and burrow cohabitation, white tailed deer dietary ecology, and carnivore feeding ecology. Jessy is interested in conservation biology, species interactions, human-wildlife conflict, and the effects of anthropogenic activities on ecosystem health and wildlife behavior.