By Caitlin O’Connell, Deputy Director Hello to all our friends and supporters! I am thrilled to be back working with GPOCP again as the new Deputy Director, a position I started in July. I first traveled to Indonesia in 2010 as a first-year PhD student working with our Executive Director, Dr. Cheryl Knott. I spent the summer […]
By Cheryl Knott, Executive Director As a child growing up in the 1960s, I remember being enraptured by the grandfatherly Louis Leakey describing his discoveries of human fossil ancestors in National Geographic TV specials. This ignited a lifelong interest in trying to understand where we came from, how we got here and why we are […]
By Aynuddin, Field Research Assistant My name is Aynuddin, but I am usually called Udin. I come from Dusun Tanjung Gunung in Kayong Utara Regency. This is the story of how I began working at the Cabang Panti Research Station (CPRS). Before I worked at CPRS, I was just an ordinary person who worked different […]
By Faye Harwell, PhD, Recent Boston University Graduate As my fellow lab mates headed to Gunung Palung National Park last summer, I made my way to Virginia with several coolers of orangutan urine in tow. Instead of trekking through the jungle in search of wild orangutans, I would be studying orangutan physiology from the comfort […]
By Laura Brubaker-Wittman, Boston University PhD Candidate This is Laura Brubaker-Wittman and I am so happy to have finally made it to Indonesia! Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indonesian government halted the issuance of research visas for the past couple of years. Finally, in June 2022, I was one of the first researchers to […]
By Sabta Pelari, Rangkong Research Coordinator My name is Sabta and I now work as the Rangkong Research Coordinator for the Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Program (Yayasan Palung). Before I started in this role in January, I served as a Field Research Assistant for seven years. Now, I stay at the new Rangkong camp throughout […]
