Gennifer is a graduate student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, currently preparing a Masters' thesis on how biodiversity and connectivity contributes to resilience when communities suffer from shocks or disturbances. Her research consists of observing a model ecosystem of tiny mites that live in moss, and studying how they react to habitat fragmentation. Gennifer’s research on mites has been covered in two videos: Mitey Media at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum (Video Art Project), and the Moss.Mite.Project (Abstract Film).

During her internship at Bioversity International, Gennifer worked with the Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research (PAR) on a project concerning indigenous farming communities and climate change. The project centred around maintaining and enhancing crop diversity to help increase communities’ resilience to environmental perturbation, while at the same time, respecting traditional values and practices. As part of her research, Gennifer summarized the efforts undertaken by PAR’s partners in communities in Malaysia and Bolivia, and based on the experiences and lessons learnt, devised a general framework for building ecological resilience into indigenous farming systems.

Following her internship at Bioversity, Gennifer returned to Canada to complete her thesis. She is also working on some other projects, which include updating the lab mite identification database and analysing an experiment on mite dispersal using a novel technique for video analysis. Gennifer also co-authored a publication based on the work performed during her internship that was presented at the First Regional Conference on Agrobiodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Utilization in Langkawi, Malaysia, Sept 2012.