Simone Whitecloud (2014-2015)

Simone Whitecloud (2014-2015)-(Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa) She received her PH.D in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Dartmouth College in April 2016. Her ecological research focuses on interactions between different plant species above tree line in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Plants living in such extreme conditions are likely to facilitate each other rather than compete for resources such as space, water, and nutrients. She is working to determine if plants are indeed experiencing facilitation. Her training as an NSF IGERT Fellow and lessons from her uncle, a healer, inspired her to interview Inuit about plant uses in Greenland, some of which are the same plants growing in her study sites in New Hampshire. To tie her ecological and ethnobotanical interests, she is researching if human selection of plants for food and medicine reflect interactions between plant species.