LEAP Student Grant Program

Grace Cajski is a rising senior at Yale College studying English and Environmental Studies with a concentration in marine conservation. This research is a capstone of her undergraduate academic career, which has been dedicated to understanding how storytelling can be a powerful conservation tool, and builds on her work as a 2021 LEAP grant recipient. As a New Orleanian, Cajski has seen how environmental degradation has obligated coastal communities that were once stewards of abundance to be conservationists. Cajski seeks to be part of a movement to create a better world, where coastal communities can reliably harvest sustainably and healthily from the sea. As a 2023 LEAP student grant recipient, Cajski will work with community organizations, including the Hui Mālama Loko Iʻa, on Hawai‘i Island to tell stories about anchialine pools, ranging from ArcGIS Story Maps to magazine feature pieces. Through science communication, Cajski hopes to foster empathy, stoke hope, and celebrate community. 

Diego Ellis Soto is a Ph.D. candidate in Ecology at Yale and a NASA FINESST Future Investigator from Uruguay. Working at the intersection of ecology, technology, conservation, and environmental justice, Ellis Soto researches how animals move and shape ecosystems across the world under increasing human threats and a rapidly changing climate. He is also interested in how access to biodiversity data is shaped by socioeconomic status and how past and present social inequalities amplify current disparities in environmental sciences. As a music producer, Ellis Soto is interested in showcasing how technology allows us to see the world through the lens of animals themselves, from their individual movements, to the sounds animals make. With this LEAP grant, Ellis Soto will continue his work on Collective Pulse, a project that combines cutting-edge technology with biological principles and musical theory to represent the lives of animals through art and music. 

Quincy Yangh is currently a Master of Environmental Management graduate student at Yale School of the Environment. His academic and professional interests revolve around the themes of Indigenous resurgence and sovereignty, Hmong ecologies, co-environmental stewardship, and biocultural conservation. For his LEAP student grant project, Yangh aims to explore the enduring and evolving relationship between the Hmong Shaman community and animals. He recognizes that animals hold immense spiritual and cultural significance in various facets of Hmong life, ranging from Shaman ceremonies and rituals to medicine to agricultural and ecological practices. To gain a deeper understanding of this intimate relationship, Yangh will meet and engage with Hmong Shamans across the U.S. diaspora. Through this project, he hopes to share a different perspective on human and animal relationships with the broader community and illuminate how his community has preserved and upheld its profound relationship with animals despite centuries of displacement, erasure, and imperial violence. 

Meredith Barges, a M.Div. student at the Divinity School, is launching a new student organization to advocate for bird-friendly changes to Yale’s practices and policies: bird-friendly building design to reduce collisions, lighting changes to protect dark skies and reduce migratory hazards, cessation of the use bird-killing rodenticides and pesticides, and the propagation of bird-friendly plants on campus.

Francis Commercon, an M.E.Sc. candidate at the School of the Environment, is conducting a case study in how the discovery of endangered shorebird populations led to updates to Chinese wetland conservation policy. Through interviews, the investigation will shed light on the interaction between ecology and Chinese environmental policy making.

Annie Crabill, an M.A. student at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, interviewed politicians in Lyon, France who have introduced a plant-based school lunch program and maintained it in the face of public pushback. She plans to publish her work as a long-form article.

Diego Ellis Soto, a Ph.D. candidate in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, is creating music using machine learning technology to map animal motion into sound. LEAP’s grant will support Soto’s work to create a proof of concept for converting animal behavior into immersive music and art. He is displaying this work at art galleries at Yale in 2022, and will publish a scientific paper.

Kristy Ferraro and Nathalie Sommer, Ph.D. candidates at Yale and former grant recipients, are continuing their work publishing on the philosophy of conservation. The research funded by this project will update two foundational ethical assumptions in conservation: that conservation should value groups and ecosystems above individual animals, and that anthropomorphism has negative value in conservation science.

Robin Happel ’23, a J.D. candidate at Pace Law School and a M.E.M. candidate at the School of the Environment, plans to work with the Appalachian Mountain Advocates, an NGO in West Virginia, on litigation strategies to combat the environmental harms of confined animal feeding operations in the region.

Rosalyn Leban ’24, a J.D. candidate, is creating podcasts, audio-interviews, and oral histories with the residents of Ometepe, Nicaragua. Her work will consider the connections between and interdependence of humans, non-human animals, and non-nimal life on the largest island in a freshwater lake in the world.

Zack Steigerwald Schnall, a M.E.M student at the School of the Environment, will conduct a survey to determine how humans assign moral worth and economic value to other species, as well as public understanding of harms to animals and the environment. From these results, he will create a value of statistical life for nonhuman animals, which cost benefit analyses will be able to use going forward. The results of this study will be compiled and synthesized in a report which will be submitted for publication.

Emily Tian, Yale College B.A. ’23, is researching and writing a longform journalism piece about California’s Proposition 12 law, a 2018 ballot initiative that was approved by 60% of the state’s voters and that requires improved housing conditions for farm animals, and the legal challenges it now faces. She will discuss how farm animal welfare has been perceived in public debates about the law.

Kevin Yang, an M.A. candidate at the School of Architecture, will design and build model structures to encourage human-animal cohabitation in urban environments, in collaboration with the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and the Yale-Myers Forest. These deployable structures will serve as shelter for animal refugees whose habitats are threatened by human activity, and showcase the genius and plight of wild animals.

AZ Arietta, a Ph.D. candidate at Yale, and Bayla Arietta will curate an art exhibit highlighting avian window strike fatalities and the threat they pose to bird populations. Scientists estimate that window strikes kill up to one billion birds in the United States annually. Their exhibit will feature artists in a variety of media. 

Logan Billet, a Ph.D. candidate at Yale, will study the ecological causes and consequences of mass die-offs from viral epidemics. Using wood frogs as a model species, he plans to monitor the spread of ranavirus outbreaks in ponds at the Yale-Myers Forest. The results will elucidate how populations and ecosystems adapt to repeated die-offs from disease.

Jesse Bryant, a Ph.D. candidate at Yale, will research the policy implications of cultural attitudes towards the elk herds of Jackson, WY. Each year, the elk herds are fed alfalfa during the winter by humans before being turned loose in the summer to fend for themselves. Bryant will use cultural sociology to look at how the elks’ status as half-wild, half-domesticated animals has affected environmental decision-making about their habitat. 

Grace Cajski ’24 YC will report on the resurgence of traditional Hawaiian aquaculture techniques. A cohort of Hawaiians has returned to the practice of growing limu, a type of Hawaiian seaweed. Cajski plans to profile these aquaculturists and their efforts through articles and oral histories. 

Kristy Ferraro and Nathalie Sommer, Ph.D. candidates at Yale, and Anthony Ferraro ’12 YC will write two scholarly articles about ethics, ecology, and the role of philosophy in conservation. In one piece, they investigate the feasibility of a rights-based framework for conservation ethics, and in another, they consider how philosophers and conservation ecologists can collaborate to advance conservation ethics.

AJ Hudson ’23 will examine how the rights of nature newly enshrined in Bolivia’s and Ecuador’s constitutions relate to the historical practice of trying animals for crimes. In past centuries, European courts tried, imprisoned, and executed animals for breaking the law. Hudson’s research will explore what this often-forgotten legal heritage reveals about our changing views of animal agency, and how this tradition can be understood for the purposes of conservation in the broader narrative of expanding and contracting rights of nature. 

Momoko Ishii, a Ph.D. candidate at Yale, will explore how to use agricultural wastes to create textiles that can replace animal-derived products. Animal products used in the fashion industry drive environmental harms and animal abuse. Ishii will test whether chemicals in common agricultural wastes, like citrus peels, can be transformed into useful textiles using scaffolding technology. 

Jack McCordick ’22 YC is conducting a series of podcast interviews about the concept of animal labor: How should we think about the work animals do? Do labor rights offer a useful framework to think through some of the major ethical, political, and social issues related to animals in the 21st century? He plans to engage with scholars from the fields of animal ethics, anthropology, political theory, and more, as well as people who regularly work with animals. 

Charlotte Murphy ’23 YC will “give a voice to the environment” through a song cycle that draws on acoustic ecology, ecomusicology, and birdsong. The composition will connect the listener and the environment, and it will make use of a variety of acoustic ecology and birdsong repositories.

Sandra Amezcua Rocha ’23 YC is creating a compilation of indigenous environmental knowledge of the Lake Patzcuaro region in Michoacán, Mexico. Assembled in both Spanish and P’urhépecha, the local indigenous language, the guide to the region’s species will serve as a conservation resource for the local community. 

Ram Vishwanathan ’22 YC, will examine the intersection of animal rights and Hindu nationalism in contemporary Indian politics. The rise of far-right nationalism in India has involved using the language of animal protection as a pretext for bigotry and violence against minorities. Vishwanathan will question how and whether fighting prejudice and animal advocacy can coexist in this context.

Alice Yiqian Wang ’23 will conduct research on household consumption patterns of red and processed meat. She will conduct several rounds of surveys to observe how income changes affect meat purchasing patterns.