Rebecca’s project under the Fulbright US Student Research Program is  “Gut Microbiomes, Health, and Nutrition in Wild Bornean Orangutans across Shifting Nutritional Landscapes” which brings her and her student counterpart from Universitas Nasional (UNAS) to the peat swamps of the Mawas Conservation Area in Indonesian Borneo to collect data from critically endangered orangutans. Rebecca’s research involves collecting behavioral data as well as biological (noninvasive) and environmental samples for nine months at the Tuanan Orangutan Research Station. She hopes to better understand how these great apes survive in the face of extreme dietary fluctuations and uncertainty.

Rebecca will complete her laboratory analyses in Indonesia at the Eijkman Institute (Jakarta), where she will train and collaborate with UNAS students in Next-Generation DNA sequencing techniques. Her research is supported by Rutgers University, Universitas Nasional, the Bornean Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF), and the Eijkman Institute.

Rebecca is a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.