Ella Vardeman is a Ph.D. candidate in the City University of New York and New York Botanical Garden Plant Sciences program under the mentorship of SEB members Dr. Ina Vandebroek and Dr. Edward Kennelly. Her research focuses on the ethnopharmacology of plants used by Haitian immigrants for women’s health. This work will contribute to a cultural competency program currently under development at NYBG that relays the results of urban ethnobotany projects in collaboration with Caribbean and Latino immigrants to medical students and physicians. She has been a member of the Society for Economic Botany for the past four years and is a recipient of the Garden Club of America Anne S. Chatham Fellowship for Medicinal Plant Research.

Douglas is a final year Plant Physiology and Biochemistry Ph.D. student at Makerere University, Uganda. He focuses on, plants used as drugs in traditional medicine, natural product research, and drug discovery for tropical diseases especially malaria through, chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques, chemogenomics and drug-repurposing, ex vivo, in vitro, and in vivo approaches. Douglas is also interested in combining efforts with other researchers and mentoring young scientists.

Guadalupe Maldonado Andrade is a PhD student in the plant biology department of the University of California - Riverside. Her research investigates medicinal plants in South-central Mexico that are used to induce abortion. Guadalupe has also received and plans trainings for conducting safe at home abortions. Aside from her research she is very dedicated to mentorship and our reach. She currently serves as a mentor for the Planting Science program. This program connects graduate students and other academics with teachers of schools interested in working on plant based experiments. Guadalupe also serves as a mentor for the Chicano link peer mentor program at UC Riverside.

Yu is a graduate student from Minzu University of China, working on economic botany of traditional knowledge associated especially with medicinal plants. She is passionate about studying the knowledge and relationship between humans and plants. Yu has fieldwork experiences mainly from traditional landscapes in China.

Nataly is a PhD student in Evolutionary Genomics at University of Copenhagen. Part of the MSCA ITN Plant.ID, her project “The fever tree: through the chemical, genomic and archival glass” aims to provide new perspectives on the origin, application, and history of the cinchona tree. She is widely experienced in bioinformatics and molecular laboratory work. Nataly is interested in multidisciplinary research that blends evolution, chemistry, history and traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples.

Harriet is a PhD student at the University of Kent and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, investigating the opportunities, challenges and complexities surrounding the revival of heritage grains and its impact on social-ecological resilience – grounded in her own experience of attempting to revive “pillas”, a naked-grained oat formerly cultivated in Cornwall (UK). She has previously explored the revitalisation of traditional Andean foods in Peru, working closely with the ‘lost’ root crop “mauka” (Mirabilis expansa) and – more broadly – is interested in how the narratives we form around food, heritage, identity and time, shape both ourselves and the biocultural landscapes we inhabit.