Victoria M. Donovan, PhD

Lab PI

Dr. Donovan was born and raised in Ontario, Canada where she  completed her undergraduate and Master's degrees. During her Master's, she studied Boreal caribou responses to forest management that focused on natural disturbance emulation. Here, she became interested in the importance of fire and other natural disturbance processes in shaping landscape structure and heterogeneity for ecosystem conservation and management. She completed her PhD at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she studied the importance of fire in shaping multi-scale patterns that promote ecosystem resilience in ecotonal ponderosa pine forests and grasslands. Following a 2-year postdoc, Dr. Donovan began her appointment as an Assistant Professor of Forest Management at the the University of Florida in the School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatic Sciences out of the West Florida Research and Education Center (WFREC). She focuses on landscape and fire ecology, with a particular interest in understanding drivers of ecosystem resilience in the face of rapid global change and how this information can be integrated into ecosystem and natural resource management.

[email protected] | Google Scholar | Research Gate

Noah Carl

Lab Technician

Typically found in mosquito-infested swamps, the creature they call Noah is most at home when surrounded by scaly and slimy inhabitants. Following his college years at Miami University, Noah has meandered around conducting research on frogs in Panama, cobras in Africa, and crocodilians in Florida - while even occasionally stopping to work and feed himself. Zoological institutions he has been employed at include Louisville Zoo, Mystic Aquarium, Cincinnati Zoo, St. Augustine Alligator Farm, and Zoo Atlanta. He is interested in determining the resiliency of the area's ecosystems while applying knowledge of past experiences to better understand our planet's incredible biodiversity.

[email protected]

Alan Ivory

PhD Student

Alan completed his undergraduate and master's degrees at the University of Florida. During his undergraduate years, he volunteered with the National Park Service, contributing to the monitoring of non-native trout in the Grand Canyon. Following the completion of his bachelor's degree, Alan joined the Scientist in Every Florida School program at the Florida Museum of Natural History. In this role, he served as an outreach scientist, actively involved in developing and delivering curriculum to K-12 students.

Alan returned to the University of Florida for his master's studies, where he explored urban wildlife movement through stormwater sewer systems. This research sparked his interest in understanding how human activities impact the environment and the consequential effects on surrounding ecosystems.

Currently, Alan is a member of the Donovan lab, focusing his research on the influence of the invasive species cogon grass on ecosystem services.

[email protected]

Ezinwanne C. Ezekannagha

PhD Student

Born and raised in Nigeria, I earned my undergraduate degree in computer science at Anambra State University. And Master’s degrees in Environment, Society, and Sustainability at the University of Cape Town and Biology at Texas Tech University, where I evaluated the spatio-temporal suitability of Bambara groundnut under future climate projections and studied the interactive effect of climate change on the photosynthetic acclimation of plants, respectively. Through these research projects, I developed a strong interest in the use of computational modeling to understand global change impact on the environment and in applying this knowledge to inform conservation and management decisions.

[email protected]

Michaella Ivey

Remote Sensing/GIS Research Associate

Michaella completed her Master’s in Forest Resources at the University of Florida in 2025. She studied how weather conditions and tree and shrub density affect patterns in wildfire occurrence and size in the eastern United States. Currently she is working on understanding the characteristics of wildfire refugia in the southeast. She enjoys using geospatial tools in R, Earth Engine, and Python to make data extraction and spatial analysis fun, efficient, and repeatable.

[email protected]

Noah Weidig

Remote Sensing/GIS Research Associate

Noah completed a Master of Science in Forest Resources at the University of Florida and a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences at Northern Kentucky University. His thesis explored large wildfire regimes inside and outside the wildland-urban interface (WUI). Currently, his research focuses on using remotely sensed data to understand the role of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) lands in altering wildfire risk across the Great Plains. He applies spatial modeling and statistical analysis to quantify how both social and environmental factors influence wildfire occurrence. Noah leverages tools like R and Google Earth Engine to translate complex spatial information into clear insights, helping people see the bigger picture of how patterns and processes shape our landscapes.

[email protected] | Personal Website

Past Undergraduate Interns & Capstone Students
Karina Torres, WFREC, NRC Program
Caden Shows, WFREC NRC Program
Samuel Thrasher, SFFGS Geomatics Program