India Schneider-Crease (PI): I’m an Assistant Professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change and the Center for Evolution and Medicine at Arizona State University (Global Health Approach). I teach courses in evolutionary medicine and One Health and am developing field-based study abroad programs in Ethiopia and Zambia. I am a co-director of the Simien Mountains Gelada Research Project, which studies the high-altitude adapted gelada monkey (Theropithecus gelada) in the Simien Mountains National Park, Ethiopia, and of the Kasanka Baboon Project, which runs the only long-term field site dedicated to the Kinda baboon (Papio kindae) in Kasanka National Park, Zambia.

I love working with communities, hanging out with monkeys, and rock climbing. I received my PhD in Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University and my BA in Philosophy and French Language and Literature at Stony Brook University. I am committed to cultivating lab/field environments that are inclusive, kind, antiracist, and accessible.

Joi Spears (Research Technician) is a research laboratory technician, visual artist, and animal lover from Los Angeles, California. Having taken an unconventional approach to life science, she originally dreamed of going to veterinary school, but her creative interests took her in a different direction. After finishing her undergraduate studies in visual and public art at California State University, Monterey Bay, she spent time working as an art teacher and freelance artist in her hometown. After a while, she realized she hadn’t given up on her love of science and interest in working with animals, and later moved to Phoenix with her husband and two toddlers, and returned to school with vet school in mind. To gain experience in the field, she worked in veterinary clinics, laboratories, and volunteered at various zoos and wildlife facilities, where she quickly developed a particular fascination with parasites like hookworm. In addition to her laboratory work, she also volunteers at a zoo in Arizona where she works with primates, her favorite of which are the very rare pileated gibbons. Now, she is preparing to apply to graduate school, where she hopes to combine her interests to study the host-parasite interactions of both people and wildlife.