Our Research Team

Dr. Heather Gaya hails from Palo Alto, California and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Whitman College in Washington. Heather was first introduced to ecological statistics during her undergraduate thesis project which focused on a local grass species in the hills of eastern Washington. After college, Heather spent 9 months in Kansas working as a small mammal technician for the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) before deciding to pursue a graduate degree at the University of Georgia. Following her love of both statistics and the outdoors, Heather developed models for Gopher Tortoise abundance and improving the standard protocol for monitoring tortoise populations over time. After graduating in 2019 with a Master of Science in Forestry and Natural Resources, Heather continued her graduate education at the University of Georgia, receiving a PhD in Forestry and Natural Resources in 2024. Her dissertation focused on the effects of climate change on migratory warblers in the Southern Appalachian Mountains and changes in avian community structure. In her current position as a Postdoctoral Researcher for the D’Angelo and Chandler labs, Heather is focusing on modeling how chronic wasting disease is impacting the Arkansas’ white-tailed deer population.  

Daniel DeRose-Broeckert grew up in Peachtree City, Georgia. He served in the United States Marine Corps as an Intelligence Analyst for five years. During this time, Daniel developed a great interest in the outdoors primarily through hunting. After being honorably discharged at the end of his enlistment, Daniel pursued an education to prepare him for a career in wildlife management. Daniel earned an A.S. in Biological Sciences from Gordon State College and a B.S. in Fisheries and Wildlife Management from the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Georgia. Throughout his educational career, Daniel has worked as a technician at the Jones Center at Ichauway for a variety of land and wildlife management related projects, primarily consisting of vegetative measurements, red-cockaded woodpecker banding, Northern bobwhite quail point-count surveys, and camera trap operations. Outside of technical positions, Daniel has practiced many objective-based land management techniques for wildlife habitat to include planning and implementation of prescribed burns, invasive plant removal, native plant cultivation, moist soil management, and timber stand improvement. Most recently, Daniel worked as a research technician at the UGA Deer Research Facility gaining white-tailed deer specific experience to include husbandry, facility operations, maintenance, chemical immobilization, and transportation. Daniel is currently a graduate student working for Dr. Gino D’Angelo studying white-tailed deer physiological and environmental photoluminescence, and white-tailed deer visual temporal contrast sensitivity to further our understanding of white-tailed deer inter- and intraspecific perception.