Team

In addition to the numerous partners listed below that aid the field station in completing it’s projects, Bher Dheigh has a dedicated team of professionals that offer their consultancy and expertise.

Kristi Beisecker
Director

Kristi Beisecker is a multi-award winning multimedia artist and designer, through her passion for art and sciences, her creative visions saw a need for a field station with a mission to conserve the natural resources through projects at the intersection of art and science. With climate change and other planetary degradations, the need to conserve the natural resources has become an immediate need. Through her unique approach to the arts and sciences through multimedia, art and design she hopes to educate students from all walks of life to think about the future of our plant and its’ surroundings. Her work in specialty photography has been recognized by several prestigious awards such as The Kennedy Center VSA, Arte Laguna Prize Venice, IPA International Photography Awards, and Grocery Story and Lux Life Magazine. Her artwork has been exhibited in several galleries and institutions, including the Smithsonian Institute’s Ripley Center, the Romanian Institute of Culture and Humanistic Research in Venice, A.I.R Gallery in Brooklyn, NYC, Worcester State University, Galerie Amarrage in Paris, among others.

Sebastian S. Cocioba
Plant Biotech R&D

Sebastian is a self-taught amateur biologist with a focus on flower morphology research and the production of tools that lower entry barriers for others to do biology as a hobby. He runs a for-profit startup New York Botanics, LLC which provides consultation and wetlab work in the field of plant bioengoneering and a non-profit Binomica Labs where he helps develop the software, hardware, wetware, and thoughtware necessary to help others explore the living world.

Cynthia Dretel, MA
Senior Editor

Cynthia Dretel (She/her) is the President and Director of Education Outreach at Art and Soul of Ukraine. She received her MA in Musicology from Indiana University Bloomington (2015) and is finishing her doctorate in Historical Musicology at the Franz Liszt Hochschule in Weimar, Germany. Her research explores the role of music and ritual created by Polish political prisoners interned in WWII Nazi concentration camps. 

Julia Rajacic
Curator

Julia Rajacic is a French-Serbian art curator & advisor based in Milan. Her aspiration is to bring together Art and Sustainability.  Julia graduated from Ecole du Louvre in Paris and ARTEM Business School in Nancy which gave her the foundations for a multidisciplinary approach.

Dennis Whigham
Botanist

The ecology of plants has been Dennis Whigham’s primary interest and his research has resulted in journeys through forests, fields and wetlands around the world.  Whigham’s current focus is on wetlands, including the role of wetlands associated with juvenile salmon habitat in Alaska; the rarest terrestrial orchid in eastern North America; and invasive species.  His current passion is to establish the North American Orchid Conservation Center (NAOCC), an initiative of the Smithsonian and the United States Botanic Garden. 

Emily Ruff
Herbalist

Emily Ruff is a community herbalist who has practiced the art and science of plant healing for fifteen years, and has integrated herbs into hospice settings for over a decade. Her studies have taken her around three continents where she has studied under healers of many traditions, including an apprenticeship under renowned herbalist Rosemary Gladstar. She is a death doula, a Hospice volunteer, and has worked in ceremony and ritual at end-of-life with family, friends, and community.

Prof. Newton Lee
Advisor

Prof. Newton Lee is the founding president of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Institute for Education, Research, and Scholarships based in Los Angeles, California, a former Disney and Bell Labs engineer, and a 2021 graduate of the FBI Citizens Academy. Serving as an FBI Ambassador, Lee expounds on social media, campus safety, student mental health, cybersecurity, and counterterrorism as portrayed in the highly acclaimed Total Information Awareness book series published by Springer Nature. 

Partners

Without their generous support whether through financial or logistical means the important work above would not happen. Bher Dheigh field station is fiscally sponsored by the Institute for Education, Research, and Scholarships (IFERS), which is an award-winning California-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity organization dedicated to improving society by conducting scientific and social research. This allows us to fundraise and process donations for our projects.

The Virtual Field

The Virtual Field creates and shares virtual teaching materials and events from field stations, marine laboratories and other research or educational sites around the world.

Collaborative virtual projects teach field skills, such as observation, communication, and critical thinking. Associated instructional materials are designed for university faculty and are being adapted for students of all ages and disciplines.

The Virtual Field is a project of the Organization of Biological Field Stations (OBFS) and began as a grassroots effort by field stations and marine laboratories (FSMLs), faculty, teachers, and technology experts to connect people of all ages to ecosystems around the world. TVF has expanded and today includes many partnering organizations.

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