Growing up under the guidance and enthusiasm of his amateur-naturalist father and mother, Matt fostered an early love and appreciation of wildlife and wild places. Weekend fishing trips, visits to Yellowstone, summer family vacations to national parks and refuges throughout the United States and Canada, and exploring the local swamps and woods with his dog were among Matt’s fondest childhood memories. Upon graduation from high school and after encouragement from his father he delayed college and instead spent a year working as an intern on several wildlife refuges and for the Peregrine Fund, experiences which convinced him to pursue a career in wildlife research and conservation.
He supplemented this interest with formal academic training by majoring in wildlife ecology, entomology, and biological aspects of conservation as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During college he also met numerous influential mentors, including his eventual graduate advisor, Dr. Robert Garrott, who had just begun a research project in Yellowstone, which Matt spent a winter working on in 1994. While he enjoyed school overall, he counted the days until each summer, when he could again get out in the field, and he spent his college summers assisting with research projects in Montana, Alaska, and the Virgin Islands.
Following graduation from college Matt went full-time into field research, spending the next seven years working on bird and mammal research projects in Antarctica, Africa, and Alaska, before returning to Bozeman and pursuing funding for a PhD. In 2003 he received a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation to research wolf predation rates and prey selection through Montana State. With the assistance of Robert Garrott he has been able to perform this research within ongoing studies of wolf-ungulate dynamics in Greater Yellowstone.
Following graduation Matt hopes to continue to pursue a career in wildlife research and conservation. This is his first year as a GK-12 fellow and he feels that the program offers a unique opportunity to bridge the gap between the scientific community and the general public, a common disconnect in many conservation and management controversies. Matt works with seventh and eighth grade teacher Laurie Kinna at Anderson School and together they utilize the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem as the foundation for helping students understand science in general and ecology in particular.