Stanford University
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Rodrigo Bello Carvalho
Ph.D. Student in Biology, admitted Autumn 2023
BioI am a field biologist deeply passionate about wildlife ecology and conservation. My academic and professional journey bridges research, fieldwork, and environmental stewardship across some of the world’s most biodiverse ecosystems.
My work focuses on understanding the functional role of megafauna (large-bodied vertebrates) in shaping tropical ecosystems through processes such as frugivory, herbivory, and seed dispersal. I am particularly interested in how savanna biodiversity, structure, and functioning respond to the loss of megafauna (defaunation), and how ecological insights can inform restoration and conservation strategies in a rapidly changing world.
I hold a Master’s degree in Biodiversity Conservation and Management from the University of Oxford (2021), and graduated with honors in Biological Sciences (B.Sc., 2017) and Biology Teaching (B.Ed., 2018) from the University of Brasília (UnB). My ecological journey began at UnB’s Ecosystem Ecology Lab (2014–2018) under Prof. Mercedes Bustamante, where I first engaged with Cerrado ecology and savanna dynamics.
Driven by a commitment to applied conservation, I worked at the Brasília Zoological Garden Foundation (2018) and taught Science and Biology in Brasília’s private schools (2019), experiences that deepened my belief in connecting ecological science and conservation with communities.
At Oxford’s Ecosystems Lab (2020–2021), I studied defaunation and seed dispersal in the Cerrado, working under Dr. Imma Oliveras and Prof. Yadvinder Malhi. I later joined Brazil’s national environmental agency (ICMBio) as an Environmental Analyst and Park Ranger (2022–2023), where I was based in the Western Brazilian Amazon, engaging in biodiversity monitoring, sustainable management of natural resources, and frontline conservation enforcement of three Conservation Units within the Purus River Basin.
Currently, I am pursuing a PhD in Biology at Stanford University in the Dirzo Lab, where my research explores megafauna-ecosystem interactions across Brazilian and African savannas, with a focus on how defaunation reshapes ecosystems. I also collaborate with UNESP’s Bird Ecology Lab on frugivory, seed dispersal, and ecological restoration in the Atlantic Forest. -
Luca Bellodi
Postdoctoral Scholar, Political Science
BioLuca Bellodi is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. His current research focuses on American political institutions, specifically the interaction between politics, bureaucracy, and populism, and its consequences for the quality of government.
In Bellodi’s primary line of research, he studies politicians’ incentives to control the behavior of bureaucratic agencies, lawmakers’ reliance on bureaucratic expertise, and the role of bureaucracy in shaping the political agenda. He introduces innovative measurement strategies that combine natural language processing techniques and machine learning to address novel questions in the study of oversight, rulemaking, and the use of information in the policymaking process.
In a related line of research, Bellodi investigates why politicians adopt populist behaviors and examines the consequences of populism for government performance and the quality of bureaucracy.
Luca Bellodi holds a PhD in political science from University College London. Before joining Stanford, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at Bocconi University in Milan.
