Staff Bios

Meet Our Team

Dr. Jason Martin, Project Leader

Jason Martin (Ph.D., University of Florida, 2009) joined the Citizen Science program at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in 2011 as the project leader of the NestWatch and NestCams programs. With the help of thousands of volunteers from across North America, NestWatch collects information on the nesting biology of birds so that long-term and widespread trends in nesting chronology, productivity, and behavior can be monitored and studied. The NestCams program has since grown and split off to be coordinated full-time. Prior to joining the Citizen Science team, Jason was a wildlife biologist for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

Robyn Bailey, Project Assistant

Robyn Bailey joined the Lab of Ornithology as the project assistant for The YardMap Network in 2011 after completing a M.S. in Fisheries and Wildlife (Michigan State University, 2010). Robyn also began supporting NestWatch in May 2011. She formerly worked as a field technician for various conservation research projects led by Point Reyes Bird Observatory, the University of Minnesota, and Mississippi State University. She first started birding in her home state of Alabama.

Lisa Larson, Application Developer

Our newest team member, Lisa, comes to us from Boston and brings expertise in state-of-the art data entry and visualization platforms to NestWatch. Lisa’s responsibilities include working with all of our Citizen Science projects to improve our public data outputs as well as leading the citizen science web development team into the future.

Kevin Ripka, Web Designer

Kevin joined our team in 2011 as web designer. Previously he has worked in advertising, taught college courses on web design, and leveraged his love of birds and snails into a variety of web resources and smartphone apps. Since arriving, he created the design for YardMap.org and is in the process of redesigning all of our citizen science web sites.