Nyeema C. Harris

Nyeema Charmaine Harris is an American environmental scientist who is Associate Professor and Director of the Applied Wildlife Ecology Laboratory at the University of Michigan. Her research considers mammalian carnivores and conservation.

Early life and education Harris was born in Philadelphia. Her mother was a biology teacher, and she used to bring home frogs for Harris to dissect. She was a regular visitor at the Philadelphia Zoo, and was selected to join them in Kenya as part of an animal rehabilitation mission at the age of thirteen. Her first job was working as an apprentice in the education centre at the Zoo.

Harris earned her bachelor's degree in wildlife science at Virginia Tech. She was recruited by Lisa Schabenburger, who continued to serve as her mentor throughout her early career. After Virginia Tech, Harris earned her master's degree at the University of Montana. At Montana, Harris investigated the demography of ungulates. She moved to North Carolina State University as a graduate student, where she studied the biogeography of carnivores and parasites. In 2010 Harris was appointed an emerging leader at the Philadelphia Zoo. After earning her doctorate, Harris joined the University of California, Berkeley, where she was awarded both an National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship and President's postdoctoral fellowship.

In 2015 Harris joined the University of Michigan, where she studies the biogeography of ecological communities. She leads the Mesoniche Project, which looks to understand the behaviour of mammalian carnivores in various sites across Michigan using an elaborate network of camera surveys. The sites included the Huron Mountains, Upper Peninsula and Detroit, and sought to introduce local communities to their native wildlife. In an interview with The Mich, Harris explained that her presence in the project did not only impact the scientific research, but also challenged public expectations of who does science, “People are not used to seeing people of color, let alone a woman of color, talk about wildlife,”.

In support of her commitment to diversifying ecology, in 2014, she co-founded the Black Ecologists Section of the Ecological Society of America.

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