Team

Meet the Team

The Cave Bio Lab is an interdisciplinary team of ecologists, field biologists, and conservation biologists, conducting both basic and applied research with real-world conservation and management implications. Our science is informing conservation and management decisions related to cave and karst science regionally, nationally, and globally.

Cave Bio Lab principal investigator | Associate Professor

Matthew L. Niemiller, Ph.D.

Dr. Niemiller is an Associate Professor of Ecology in the Department of Biological Sciences at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. He earned a B.S. (2003) and M.S. (2006) in Biology from Middle Tennessee State University and a Ph.D. (2011) in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Tennessee. Before arriving at UAH in 2017, Dr. Niemiller was a Gaylord Donnelley Environmental Postdoctoral Fellow at the Yale Institute of Biospheric Studies (2011-2013) and completed additional postdoctoral training at the University of Kentucky (2013-2014) and Illinois Natural History Survey at the University of Illinois (2014-2016). He also was an associate ecologist at INHS (2016-2017). His research focuses on the ecology, evolution, and conservation of subterranean life in North America, but also herpetofauna of the southeastern United States with an emphasis on salamanders. Dr. Niemiller has published more than 100 papers, book chapters, and books on subterranean life.

Researcher | education and outreach coordinator | cave Bio Lab Mom

K. Denise Kendall Niemiller, Ph.D.

Dr. Niemiller is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Biological Sciences at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. She earned an A.A. (2007) in Biology from Pellissippi State Technical Community College and a B.S. (2009) in Biological Sciences and Ph.D. (2013) in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee. Before arriving at UAH in 2017, Dr. Niemiller was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Kentucky (2013-2014) and Merit Program Director (2016-2017) and laboratory coordinator (2014-2017) for the School of Integrative Biology at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. Dr. Niemiller’s research is focused on formal and informal STEM education, ecology, evolution, and conservation biology.

Amata Hinkle, M.S.

Amata earned a B.S. in Biochemistry from Oakland University (2008) and M.S. (2011) in Biology from Wayne State University. They started caving in 2010 and have been working with Karst Entomology Project in the UK and Spain since 2016 and the Cave Bio Lab since 2018. With almost 15 years experience on cave and wilderness search & rescue teams, they also help instruct new lab members in general safe caving techniques as well as vertical caving skills. Amata’s favourite critters are all the various Big-eared Bats, Spinanycta alabamensis (a cave silverfish), and Orfelia fultoni (called “glowworms” but are really a bioluminescent fly larvae).