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Scientific Advisory Committee
Huyck Preserve and Biological Research Station
The SAC advises the Board of Directors on research activities, management of the natural resources of the Preserve and educational programs. The SAC selects the Scientist-in-Residence and also reviews and selects Huyck Grant proposals for awards.
George Robinson, Ph.D., Chair SAC -
University at Albany
Emily H. Mooney, Ph.D. - Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
Henry Art, Ph.D. -
Williams College
Jeff Corbin, Ph.D. -
Union College
Jerome G. Rozen, Ph.D. -
American Museum of
Natural History
Kerry D. Woods, Ph.D. -
Bennington College
George R. Robinson, Ph.D., Chair SAC
Associate Professor of Biological Sciences
University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, N.Y.
Education: Portland State University, Portland, Ore. (B.S. in biology); University of California, Davis (M.S. and Ph.D. in botany)
Web site: http://www.albany.edu/faculty/grobins/
Contact information: grobins@albany.edu
George Robinson, a long-time researcher at the Huyck Preserve, is a member of the Board of Directors and chairs the Scientific Advisory Committee. He has been on the faculty of the University at Albany since 1993 and teaches courses on biodiversity conservation, restoration ecology, plant ecology, biogeography, and introduction to biology. He is also the coordinator of the University at Albany’s Graduate Program in Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, and co-director of the Master's Program in Biodiversity, Conservation and Policy. He is also an associate scientist at the New York State Museum, a visiting scientist with New York State Parks, and a member of the Scientific Working Group of the New York State Biodiversity Research Institute. He is a former chair and treasurer of the New York State Invasive Plant Council and a current member of the Old Songs, Inc., Board of Directors.
Dr. Robinson’s research in restoration ecology involves testing methods for enhancing natural succession in degraded landscapes and studying effects of vegetation on water quality in urban watersheds. His has supervised several graduate theses and dissertations based on research conducted at the Huyck Preserve including studies of forest succession, beech bark disease, stream ecology, and invasive earthworm ecology.
Emily H. Mooney, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Biology
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
Web site: http://www.mcla.edu/Undergraduate/majors/biology/emilymooney/
Contact information: E.Mooney@mcla.edu
Emily Mooney is a plant ecologist working as an assistant professor at the
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, MA. Her experience
with the Huyck Preserve began as a graduate student with yearly visits to
study unique plant populations at the preserve. During the academic year,
she is an assistant professor in ecology at the Massachusetts College of
Liberal Arts. During the summer, she serves as the Coordinator of the
Undergraduate Research Program at the Rocky Mountain Biological
Laboratory. Broadly speaking, her research asks questions about the
interactions between a plant's genotype and its environment, which may
include animals that like to eat it and people that like to harvest it.
She has published work related to conservation of medicinal plants and
plant-herbivore interactions. Currently, she is researching both of these
topics in Ligusticum porteri (Porter's lovage), a parsley-like plant
native to the Rocky Mountain region. Mentoring undergraduate researchers
is an important part of her research projects.
Henry W. Art, Ph.D.
Samuel Fessenden Clarke Professor of Biology
Williams College, Williamstown, Mass.
Education: Dartmouth College (A.B. in biology), Yale University (Ph.D., in biology)
Web site: http://www.williams.edu/Biology/Faculty_Staff/hart/hart.shtml
Contact information: hart@williams.edu
Henry Art has been on the faculty of Williams College since 1970 and on the Huyck Preserve’s Scientific Advisory Committee for the past several years. He has been doing long-term ecological research in the Hopkins Memorial Forest (HMF), a 2,600-acre reserve in Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont managed by the Williams College Center for Environmental Studies. Dr. Art investigates long-term changes in various plant communities at HMF and the extent to which natural and human-use disturbances have played a role in shaping the present patterns of these ecosystems. His study involves analyzing deed history, oral history, and other socioeconomic data, as well as data collected from a grid of permanent monitoring plots initiated in 1935 by the U.S. Forest Service when it operated the facility. Dr. Art is also interested in the dynamics of Atlantic Coastal Maritime Forest Ecosystems and has been investigating the long-term, successional changes and reproductive patterns of maritime forest components of various National Seashores.
Jeffrey Corbin, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Biology Department
Union College, Schenectady, N.Y.
Education: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C. (Ph.D.); University of California, Berkeley (postdoctoral training)
Web site: http://www.union.edu/academic_depts/biology/Our%20Faculty/jeffC.php
Contact information: corbinj@union.edu
Plant ecologist Jeffrey Corbin joined the Huyck Preserve’s Scientific Advisory Committee in 2010. At Union College, he teaches courses in Heredity, Evolution and Ecology; Environmental Studies; and Plant Ecology. His research focuses on the intersection of community ecology (the study of how interactions among species and between species and the environment affect species diversity and patterns of abundance) and ecosystem ecology (the study of how ecosystems work). He is interested in restoration science, which combines ecological knowledge and theory with real-world applications to increase our understanding of ecological interactions and help reverse the impacts of human activities on ecosystems. He investigates the impact of invasive species, how species traits can predict the outcomes of competitive interactions, and how plant community composition interacts with ecosystem processes.
“The Huyck Preserve and other such research centers provide an important foundation for a variety of ecological and conservation questions,” he says. “I am committed to helping the Huyck Preserve continue to contribute to first-rate ecological research.”
Jerome G. Rozen, Jr., Ph.D.
Curator, Department of Invertebrate Zoology
American Museum of Natural History, New York, N.Y.
Education: University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kan. (B.A.); University of California at Berkeley (Ph.D.)
Web site: http://www.amnh.org/science/divisions/invertzoo/bio.php?scientist=rozen
Contact information: rozen@amnh.org
Jerry Rozen, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), does worldwide research on the biology, immature stages, and evolutionary relationships of solitary bees (bees that don’t live in colonies) and cleptoparasitic bees (bees that lay eggs in the nests of other solitary bees). He first became involved with the Huyck Preserve in the 1960s when he discovered Macropis nuda, a rare solitary bee, there. In fact when the Lake Myosotis Dam was being repaired in the 1990s, construction workers erected a temporary barrier to protect one of the nesting sites that was nearby.
Dr. Rozen has conducted fieldwork in the United States, Europe, Trinidad, Republic of South Africa, Namibia, Egypt, Morocco, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Israel, Pakistan, Costa Rica, Mexico, Argentina, Peru, and the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan. He was chair of AMNH’s Entomology Department (1960-1972); as Deputy Director for Research (1972-1986) he was administratively responsible for all museum research and field station activities, which included overseeing AMNH’s Southwestern Research Station in Portal, Ariz. He is still a curator at AMNH and continues his bee research. He also co-organized and administers the Bee Course, an annual summer workshop for biologists, at the Southwestern Research Station. He served on the Preserve’s Board of Directors from the 1980s until recently; he is now an honorary director and is still active with the Scientific Advisory Committee.
Kerry David Woods, Ph.D.
Professor, Natural Sciences
Bennington College, Bennington, Vt.
Education: Illinois College, Jacksonville, Illinois (B.S. in physics and biology); Cornell Univ., Ithaca, N.Y. (Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology)
Web site: http://faculty.bennington.edu/~kwoods
Contact information: kwoods@bennington.edu
Kerry Woods, who has been a member of the Huyck Preserve’s Scientific Advisory Committee since 2000, is a plant community ecologist interested in the long-term dynamics of late-successional (old-growth) forests of northeastern North America. He has been on the faculty of Bennington College since 1986 and teaches ecology, evolution, and field biology. He is the Director of Research at the Ives Lake Field Station of the Huron Mountain Wildlife Foundation in northern Michigan. The station provides access to large tracts of old-growth forests and several pristine lakes. He also serves as an editor for the Ecological Society of America and the International Association for Vegetation Science, and in 2007 he chaired the national meetings of Ecological Society of America.
“Many of the most important research problems in ecology call for long-term research in natural systems,” says Dr. Woods. “Sites with diverse or uncommon ecosystems [that are] permanently dedicated to a research mission are very few indeed. The Huyck Preserve is one of those few; researchers can establish studies here fully confident that they can return to undisturbed research sites in the future.”
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