• Thomas Lovejoy
• Brian Bowen
• Andrew Hendry
• David Reznick

Thomas Lovejoy, Ph.D.

Thomas E. Lovejoy was elected University Professor at George Mason in March 2010. He also holds the Biodiversity Chair at the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment and was President from 2002-2008. An ecologist who has worked in the Brazilian Amazon since 1965, he works on the interface of science and environmental policy. Starting in the 1970’s he helped bring attention to the issue of tropical deforestation and in 1980 published the first estimate of global extinction rates (in the Global 2000 Report to the President). He conceived the idea for the long term study on forest fragmentation in the Amazon (started in 1978) which is the largest experiment in landscape ecology, the Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems project (also known as the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project). He also coined the term “Biological diversity”, originated the concept of debt-for-nature swaps and has worked on the interaction between climate change and biodiversity for more than 20 years. He is the founder of the public television series “Nature”. In the past, he served as the Senior Advisor to the President of the United Nations Foundation, as the Chief Biodiversity Advisor and Lead Specialist for the Environment for the Latin American region for the World Bank, as the Assistant Secretary for Environmental and External Affairs for the Smithsonian Institution, and as Executive Vice President of World Wildlife Fund-US. In 2002, he was awarded the The Tyler Prize, and in 2009 he was the winner of BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Ecology and Conservation Biology Category. He has served on advisory councils in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton administrations. In 2009 he was appointed Conservation Fellow by the National Geographic Society. He chairs the Scientific and Technical Panel for the Global Environment Facility which provides funding related to the international environmental conventions. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. (Biology) from Yale University.

Brian Bowen, Ph.D.

Brian Bowen began a lifelong interest in marine life by spending summers on Cape Cod, at the boundary between the Gulf of Maine and the mid-Atlantic coast.  The difference between the two water bodies was dramatic during the summer, with tropical seahorses on one side, and cold temperate sculpins on the other.  There began the first stirring of a lifelong interest in marine biogeography. After an ill-advised attempt at a biomedical career, he earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at Providence College (1980), then a M.A. at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (1987) under John A. Musick.  There he realized that molecular genetic technologies could reveal much about the natural history of aquatic species.  Brian Bowen completed a Ph.D. in genetics (1992) under John C. Avise at University of Georgia, and subsequently worked as a post-doctoral researcher and assistant professor at University of Florida.  In March 2003, he joined Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology at University of Hawaii, and was promoted to research professor in 2009.  During this interval he has conducted globe-spanning genetic surveys of reef fishes, marine turtles, sharks, bonefishes, anchovies, sardines, shrimp, and sea birds as well as regional surveys of manatees, dolphins, rattlesnakes, lizards, freshwater turtles, limpets, sturgeon, and other fishes, for a total of about 150 publications.  These reports include contributions in the journals Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy, Proceedings of the Royal Society, and many others. Recent accomplishments include a co-authored report on marine turtle conservation for the National Academy of Sciences, co-authorship of the best selling textbook Diversity of Fishes, and a realignment of marine biogeographic provinces with Jack Briggs.

Andrew Hendry, Ph.D.

Andrew Hendry is an Associate Professor at the Redpath Museum and the Department of Biology at McGill University. Dr. Hendry graduated with his Bachelors of Science from the University of Victoria in British Columbia and received both his Master’s and Ph.D. from the University of Washington. He has been awarded honors from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the American Naturalist Society and has been continually funded via grants from the National Science Foundation and NSERC. His research interests include eco-evolutionary dynamics, specifically how ecological changes influence evolutionary dynamics. The Hendry lab uses a combination of empirical work, theory and modeling to better understand the interactions between ecological and evolutionary processes.  Research conducted in the Hendry lab has utilized a wide variety of focal species including sticklebacks, guppies, salmon, Lemon sharks and Darwin’s finches to asses these eco-evolutionary dynamics in natural systems.

David Reznick, Ph.D.

David Reznick is an evolutionary biologist who has specialized in the empirical study of adaptation. His general interest is in studying the process of evolution by natural selection from an experimental perspective and testing evolutionary theory in natural populations.  He has over 25 years of experience working with guppies on the island of Trinidad. He has developed mark-recapture methods for evaluating the population dynamics of natural populations, quantifying the life history patterns of natural populations, quantifying the genetic components of variation within and among populations in life histories in the laboratory and executing field experiments that have allowed the estimate of the rate of evolution and intensity of selection on life history traits in nature. In 2003, he was awarded the E. O. Wilson Naturalist Prize and recognized as a Distinguished Professor of Biology in 2013. David Reznick served as the Vice President of the American Society of Naturalists in 2011.