Dominican Ayanna St. Rose earns PHD in Biology from Arkansas University

Ayanna St. Rose, a Dominican national from Fond Canie, has successfully earned her Doctoral degree (PhD) in Biology from the University of Arkansas on November 29, 2023. Her dissertation focuses on understanding the links between biological complexity and ecosystem functions in forested landscapes across continental US. She developed new methods for computing forest structure using remote sensing technologies and proposed an innovative approach for quantifying multi-trophic diversity to inform forest management decisions.

Dr. St. Rose, a 2012 graduate of Convent High School, went on to complete her Associate’s degree in Physics and Biology at the Dominica State College where she graduated with top honors. During this time, she served as a student ambassador, held the title of Miss Mas Jamboree, and represented her country on the Women’s National Football team. In 2015 she left Dominica to pursue a Bachelor of Science in Biology, where she was introduced to landscape ecology and R programming, and discovered her passion for research while conducting research on preventing diseases in rice.

Her then-professor of landscape ecology and advisor, Dr. Kusum Naithani says, “I have known Ayanna since 2017 when she took my General Ecology and Landscape Ecology courses as an undergraduate student at the University of Arkansas. I was impressed with her research aptitude and overall performance in those courses. As a result, I offered her a graduate student position in my research group to work on an NSF-funded project to model diversity-function relationships in forested ecosystems.” Dr. St. Rose finished her master’s degree in Biological Analytics in spring 2022. She is passionate about preserving forests as she has seen the role these forests play in social, economic, and spiritual well-being of her people. Under the direction of her advisor, she participated in the NEON/TERENO Carbon Workshop and received NEON Early Career fellowship to explore open data and tools used for modeling carbon cycle in her first year as a graduate student. Based on this early exposure to open data and tools, she designed her dissertation research project, focused on understanding the drivers and consequences of multi-trophic diversity in forested landscapes using NEON data and machine learning. She presented her research in national (National Association of Black Geoscientists Conference, Ecological Society of America) and international (IALE-North America, IALE-World, American Geophysical Union) meetings.

Ayanna is passionate about increasing diversity and creating equitable and inclusive communities for underrepresented groups in conservation biology and climate science. She was recognized as a notable black campus leader (U of A) and received a leadership medal for her service to the University of Arkansas. She has served as a Chair of the Latin American Chapter of the Ecological Society of America (ESA) and is now an active member of the chapter. She advocated for the change of the Latin American Chapter of ESA to the Latin America & Caribbean chapter in 2020 which was implemented in 2021 to create a space for Caribbean people at ESA. She loves interacting with students and has taught (lab instructor for Principles of Biology, and Biology for Majors) every spring and fall semesters to support her degree. She has mentored four National Science Foundation – Research Experience for Undergraduate (NSF-REU) students and has participated in several Graduate School Workshops as an invited panelist. She participated in the Future Leaders and Geoscience High-Road Internship Program (FLAGSHIP, NSF funded) in fall 2022 where she developed presentations on sustainable environmental infrastructure projects with a focus on community impacts, environmental and climate justice, and the careers and career pathways into these vital services. She presented the results from this program at the American Geophysical Union Meeting with the FLAGSHIP support. Dr. St. Rose recently received the David Causey Award for Graduate Study in Biology for her outstanding performance in research, teaching and service in the Department of Biological Sciences.

In addition to her service to the scientific community, Ayanna regularly volunteers at the 7 Hills to support homeless people in Fayetteville. Dr. Naithani raves, “She is an intelligent, curious, dedicated, and hard-working student who always goes above and beyond in her research, teaching, and service. She is an excellent researcher, teacher, collaborator, and leader who is passionate about diversity of forests and people alike.”

Dr. Ayanna St. Rose is the daughter of Deryck ‘Hunter’ St. Rose and Marah McIntyre -St. Rose.