Jamela earned her B.S. degree in Biology from Western Illinois University in 2013. She joined our lab in Spring 2019 after working in ecological restoration and plant surveying with the Missouri Botanical Garden, Great Basin Institute, Student Conservation Association, and V3 Companies. She also worked a short stint on a prescribed fire crew with The Nature Conservancy in the Ozarks. Her research at Utah State focused on applying spatial analysis to answer questions about the efficacy of federal and state fuel treatments in Utah. Jamela defended her thesis in 2022. She went on to work on a fuels monitoring crew in the Tetons.