Operations Assistant, NIRC
Negaunee Integrative Research Center
When Robert was nine years old, he told his mother, “One day I will go into the Field Museum and never come out.” Grown-up Robert has almost achieved his goal.
Unbeknownst to Robert, he began a second life at the Field Museum in 2018 as a volunteer to supplement time off between gigs as a freelance art director and graphic designer—his previous profession. What started as a once-a-week volunteer opportunity turned into a nearly five-plus days per week effort in the Museum's Botany department working with fungi and lichens for nearly three years. He became a database specialist in the Field Museum's cryptogamic herbarium. He transcribed thousands of fungal specimen labels (mushrooms and lichens), checked lichen type specimens against publication citations, and performed myriad administrative herbarium tasks.
During the Pandemic, Robert repackaged Curator of Lichens Thorsten Lumbsch's collection of over 13,000 lichenized fungal specimens. He verified and revised the taxonomic integrity of over 4,000 lichen taxa in the museum's database using taxonomy resolution services and photographed specimen labels for later digitization projects.
During Members' Nights and community science events such as WeDigBio and Collections Club, he supervised and participated with other volunteers. At various events over three years, Robert and lichen volunteers repackaged thousands of mushroom and lichen specimens from herbarium sheets to acid-free, labeled packets; transcribed >1,000 specimen labels into MS-Excel spreadsheets; glued >600 mushroom specimen labels to new collection boxes, and revised tens of thousands of bibliographic entries in the Museum's database.
Additional volunteer opportunities in the museum included leading 20+ SPNHC attendees on a field trip to the Milwaukee Public Muse...
Accomplishments
Publications
Konrat M., Engel J.J., Briscoe L., Rodriguez Y., Niezgoda M., Sass-Gyrmati A., Pocs T., Pinheiro da Costa D., Wagner D.H., Renner M.A.M., Enrique Gil Novoa J., Larrain J., Tabua M., Ranft H., Le J., Glenny D., Long R., Pitts G.M., Evans N., Salm R., Volunteers of the Collections Club (2021). The herbarium of Rudolf M. Schuster: unlocking over a half a century of botanical exploration. Arctoa. Vol. 30: 126–137
Associations
- Member, American Alliance of Museums
- Member, Illinois Mycological Association
- Member, The Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections
- Member, American Institute of Graphic Arts
Volunteering
- Field Museum, 2018-current
- Metro Chicago Heart Walk, almost every year since 2015
- AIDS Run & Walk Chicago, almost every year since 2001
- Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, 1996-2000
Contact