People

Dr. Shermin de Silva (PhD) - Group Leader
I direct the Udawalawe Elephant Research Project, and am the President and Founder of Trunks & Leaves Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to the evidence-based conservation of Asian elephants and their habitats.

Prior to joining UCSD, I held postdoctoral fellowships at Colorado State University, the Institute or Advanced Study in Berlin, and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. I currently serve on the Asian Elephant Specialist Group of the IUCN. I received my PhD in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania.

UCSD faculty profile
Personal homepage
Email: srdesilva (at) ucsd (dot) edu

Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Researchers

Finn Deacher - BS / MS Program

I am currently an undergraduate at UCSD studying EBE. I am from Boulder, Colorado and spent a semester abroad studying ecology and marine biology in Australia. I am interested in animal behavior and recovery ecology, and plan on doing a masters and PhD with the goal to work in endangered species conservation.

Sateesh Venkatesh - Graduate Student

I finished my undergraduate in Biology at The College of Wooster in Ohio, after which I spent about 8 years working on different conservation projects around the world. My work ranged from elephants in Thailand to amphibians in Ecuador and jaguars in Costa Rica. I then completed my Masters in Animal Behavior and Conservation at Hunter College in NYC. My thesis, partnered with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, was focused on understanding individual differences in a group of semi-wild elephants in Myanmar.

Graduate student in EBE
Fulbright / National Geographic Scholar (2024-2025).

Abhinaya Pathak - Graduate Student

I worked for Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation under Ministry of Forests and Environment for more than 7 years in different protected areas of Nepal. As I love to work and study about megaherbivores, I have engaged with IUCN Asian Rhino Specialist Group as a member. I did my Masters from National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan in 2020 conducting genetic studies on Greater One Horned Rhinoceros of Chitwan National Park, Nepal as my thesis. I have immense desire to learn megaherbivores with both genetic and ecological lenses alongside apply the learnings in the management and conservation of the species.

Graduate student in EBE
Shurl & Kay Curci Foundation Scholar (2023-2025)

WWF - Education For Nature Scholar

Sanchaya Sharma - Graduate Student

I have over five years of research experience in wildlife conservation, focusing primarily on elephant conservation in India. My work involves using GIS and remote sensing data to understand the drivers of human-elephant conflicts, helping to uncover patterns that can guide effective conservation strategies. My broader goal is to contribute to actionable, data-driven plans that can influence both academic research and policy development. By blending scientific research with real-world applications, I hope to create sustainable solutions for wildlife conservation and support long-term environmental protection.

Graduate student in EBE
Shurl & Kay Curci Foundation Scholar (2024-2026)

Anastasia (Annie) Madsen - Postdoctoral Researcher

I am broadly interested in how social structures in animal populations interact with ecological processes, especially on landscapes heavily impacted by anthropogenic activities. I completed my PhD at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where I investigated how demographic turnover in golden-crowned sparrows impacted 1) long-term structure and stability of social networks and 2) long-term social-spatial fidelity, and finally, how novel information spread through their social networks. As a part of my current research supported by the NSF-PRFB program, I am using a complex adaptive systems approach to study how fission-fusion social processes in animal societies are influenced by internal (social) dynamics and external (ecological) dynamics. Importantly, this work aims to investigate how social phenotypes arise by comparing genetically distinct populations on landscapes with different levels of human disturbance.

NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in Biology
My homepage

UCSD Undergraduate Students

Sabine Wood - EBE
Flora Xie - Biostatistics
Trevor Ryan - Biology/Marine science
Liesel Geyer - Global health

Alison Tran - Biology
Gabriel Ulfohn - Biology
Dominic Tse - EBE
Warren Hui - EBE

Keiki Sunderland - EBE/Literature and writing
Ananya Giri - EBE

Other Lab Members

Chithrangani Rathnayake - GIS Analyst

Chithra received her PhD from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University) on the relationship between land-use change and human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka. She is interested in mapping and analysing land cover change using geospatial technologies, as well as the implications for elephant habitats.

Past Lab Members

Helina Jolly - Postdoctoral Researcher (Homepage), Social Sciences Humanities Research Centre (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Fellow (2024)
Jasmine Hubbard - EBE
Carolina Loera - UC Irvine Undergraduate, UC STARS Summer Scholar (2024)
Cecilia Ma Li - UC Davis Undergraduate, UC LEADS Summer Scholar (2023)
Declan Healy - Summer volunteer (2023)
Sophia Hermosillo-Ramirez - Class of '24
Alyssa Ayan - Class of '24