Research Site Staff

Tri Wahyu Susanto, Research Director

Wahyu conducted his Master’s Thesis research in Gunung Palung in 2009 and has been returning ever since. Currently, Wahyu is based in Jakarta, Wahyu frequently visits Cabang Panti every few months. At Cabang Panti he finds it is a joy to reunite with his friends from the Orangutan Project and all the orangutans he has known for years. Wahyu now facilitates both national and international researchers and students to come to Gunung Palung National Park for various research topics.

Caitlin O’Connell, Deputy Director

Caitlin completed her PhD from Boston University in 2018. Her work has explored when and why social behavior takes place in order to understand the costs and benefits of gregariousness for an ape that often ranges alone.  She is currently the Deputy Director of the Gunung Palung Orangutan Conservation Program and a visiting research associate at Rutgers University.

Elizabeth Barrow, Conservation Research Director

Beth holds a Master’s degree in Research in Primatology and Conservation and has over 10 years of experience in Indonesia at various research and conservation projects. Her Master’s research was an assessment of the use of drones to monitor orangutan populations. She has worked for the project since 2019 and oversees applied conservation research, implements research protocols, and assures data quality across conservation programs.

Ahmad Rizal, Research Manager

Rizal was previously a student who conducted research at Gunung Palung in 2019 studying orangutan seed dispersal behavior for this thesis. After graduating from university, he was interested in coming back to help manage the Orangutan Project in the field. Rizal is so excited to continue on with his new journey, as the Research Manager, and he is highly motivated to continue to research and conserve wild Bornean orangutans.

Ishma Fatiha, Assistant Research Manager

Ishma first came to Gunung Palung National Park for 6 months for her senior thesis research in 2018. In 2021, she was excited to return to work as a field laboratory assistant. She has learned to process orangutan fecal and urine samples, manage the data that is collected every day, as well as follow wild orangutans. She has also re-started the collection and on-site analysis of intestinal parasites found in orangutan fecal samples, which helps us to better understand and monitor orangutan health.

Sabta Perlari, Rangkong Research Manager

Sabta has worked as a research assistant at Cabang Panti for over seven years. As part of working as a research field assistant, one of his favorite memories was being able to travel to Tuanan Research Station to learn more about how orangutan research is conducted at other research stations across Borneo.

Ari Marlina, Laboratory Assistant

Ari, who goes by II, first came to Gunung Palung National Park for 3 months for her undergraduate senior thesis research in 2023. She is a former West Bornean Orangutan Caring Scholarship (WBOCS) recipient who graduated Tanjungpura University in Pontianak. During her senior thesis fieldwork she witnessed the social behavior of mothers and offspring at Cabang Panti and other study sites. Now her daily activities at Cabang Panti this time around are more dominated by time in the laboratory, collecting and processing the orangutan urine and fecal samples, working on orangutan food sample collections and recording orangutan feeding data per day when followed, weighing and measuring plant parts from each feeding bout, and performing data entry and management for operational ease of the project.

Ziyadatul Hoiroh, Research Assistant Microbiome Lab

Ziya first came to Gunung Palung National Park in 2024 as a research assistant with Boston University PhD student Zoe Albert. Ziya completed her Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Universitas Nasional (UNAS) in Jakarta in 2023. The first time she saw orangutans while collecting samples, she was thrilled! Now Ziya leads the orangutan microbiome lab work in the in situ lab at Cabang Panti Research Station. She is in charge of the day-to-day operations in the lab including, DNA extraction, PCR, gel electrophoresis, library prep, and sequencing using the ONT MinION.

Rhanda, Phenology Coordinator

Rhanda, who often goes by Landa, first started working for the Orangutan Project in 1994. Right now, for the research project, he focuses on collecting phenology data, which is how many trees in the forest are fruiting, flowering, or producing new leaves, each month. Every month Landa helps collect data from 30 plots and 30 belts all around the research site. That’s over 5,500 trees Landa helps survey every month!

Gunawan Wibisono, Botanist

Gunawan is a trained botanist with a bachelor’s degree from Tanjungpura University in Pontianak. He first can to Cabang Panti to assist with phenological surveys in 2022. He now lead the phenological surveys in the Village Forests that Yayasan Palung works with. Gunawan is working his way through the entire data base of trees that orangutans have eaten from since 1994 to check and correct species identifications.

Raden Harrisan, Field Research Assistant

Hassan is the longest-serving field research assistant and is very devoted to working for GPOCP. He enjoys every aspect of following and data collection and is extremely interested in how the data will be used and the impact it will have for science.

Suharto, Field Research Assistant

Suharto, known to all as Toto for short, comes from Matan Jaya Village, in the upper reaches of West Kalimantan. He has worked as a research field assistant at GPOCP for over 10 years! Even after all this time, Toto feels lucky that he still witnesses new events in the highly diverse rainforest. For example, he witnessed an interaction between an orangutan, Bibi, and a slow loris (read more about it here)

Sahril Ramadani, Field Research Assistant

Sahril has been working at Cabang Panti for about six years. He first started working as the camp assistant, taking care of basic camp needs such as cleaning and maintenance. Then he was appointed to work as a research field assistant to collect data on orangutans. Sahril enjoys finding some of the rarer and more interesting animals of the rainforest, he was even lucky enough to find a tarsier. However, Sahril enjoys seeing all animals and insects, regardless of their rarity.

Yogi Saputra, Field Research Assistant

Yogi grew up in Sedahan a village near Gunung Palung National Park. He has worked as a research assistant since 2018, after he graduated from high school. Yogi is very talented at searching for orangutans and frequently finds them in the forest.

Herman, Field Research Assistant

Herman has worked on various jobs and projects for the Research Program since 2014, including the orangutan nest survey. He started to work permanently for the Research Program in 2020 as a field research assistant. Prior to working for the Research Program, Herman worked as an illegal logger in the forests near Gunung Palung National Park in order to support his family. Now Herman realizes he could never work in illegal logging again and he needs to take care of the forest. From all he has learned and experienced he has become a forest advocate who encourages all to take care of the earth. (read more about his transformative story here).

Dika, Field Research Assistant

In 2021, GPOCP welcomed Dika to the team. Dika and is from Sedahan village, in Kayong Utara. Dika has worked at the Cabang Panti Research Station for many years and is excited to join the orangutan team. Dika’s favorite experience so far has been collecting data on orangutan behavior, especially watching orangutans construct nests.

Jakaria, Field Research Assistant

Jakaria, known as Jak, recently joined GPOCP as a field research assistant in 2021. However, he is a highly experienced field researcher as he has worked at Cabang Panti Research Station since 2014. His skills include collecting phenology data and camera trapping and he is now very excited to learn skills in collecting orangutan data.

Aynuddin, Research Field Assistant

Aynuddin, usually called Udin, joined GPOCP in 2018 as a Camp Maintenance Assistant and started as a Field Research Assistant in 2023. Udin comes from Dusun Tanjung Gunung in Kayong Utara Regency, the village that directly borders the National Park. Udin enjoys getting to know the orangutans as every orangutan has a different character and personality, similar to humans! Some orangutans are easy to approach, and some are difficult to approach. As a field assistant, Udin quickly learned that following orangutans was both fun and tiring. Little by little, he learned more about orangutans and how to collect all the necessary data and he finds this experience to be very rewarding.

Natalie Robinson, Program Coordinator

Natalie Robinson first began her involvement with the project in 2016, conducting research in the Knott Lab at Boston University as an undergraduate student. From 2018-2019, she spent a year in Borneo, working as a Research Assistant at Cabang Panti Research Station. She then worked as GPOCP’s Program Coordinator (2019-2023), overseeing both the Conservation and Research teams working on the ground in Indonesia. Natalie has developed a deep passion for understanding and conserving the wild orangutans of Gunung Palung National Park. She now a PhD student at Rutgers University.

Sumihadi, Field Laboratory Assistant

Sumihadi, known as Sumi, worked as a Laboratory Assistant for GPOCP (2019-2024). She graduated from Tanjungpura University in Pontianak, Indonesia. She is also a 2014 recipient of the West Bornean Orangutan Caring Scholarship (WBOCS). She first visited Gunung Palung in 2017 to intern and later returned in 2018 to conduct research for her undergraduate thesis, about Ficus trees, an important orangutan food. As a laboratory assistant, Sumi processes orangutan urine and fecal samples, which are collected by the field assistants, as well as plant samples. In addition to processing samples, Sumi sometimes joins the field assistants on follows to help collect the samples. She also helps with data entry and management, keeps the lab organized, and regularly inventories all of our equipment.

Andre Ronaldo, Staff Botanist & Nest Survey Coordinator

Andre is a passionate botanist and enjoys learning about all the many plants in the rainforest. Andre specializes in the study of trees in mixed Dipterocarp forests, like those found in
West Kalimantan, Borneo. Andre has been identifying trees and plants for the orangutan nest surveys as well as conducting plant surveys in the customary forests with Yayasan Palung team since 2019.