2024 Plenary Speakers

Dr. Steve Cooke is a Canadian biologist specializing in ecology and conservation physiology of fish. He is best known for his integrative work on fish physiology, behavior, ecology, and human-dimensions to understand and solve complex environmental problems. He currently is a Canada Research Professor in Environmental Science and Biology at Carleton University and the editor-in-chief of scientific journals such as Conservation Physiology and Fisheries. Dr. Cooke earned his bachelor’s degree in environmental studies at the University of Waterloo in 1999 and his doctorate degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2002. Cooke’s research has contributed to many aspects of the biology, conservation and management of fish and aquatic ecosystems. Often, Cooke uses novel technology, like EMG transmitters, and telemetry techniques to understand the behavior and physiology of free-living animals. Recently he provided a framework for the application of telemetry techniques to enable IUCN Red List ranking. Cooke uses interdisciplinary approaches (ranging from behavior to genomics) to study complex conservation and management problems. Notable awards given to Dr. Cooke includes being a recipient of the Award of Excellence from the Fisheries Management Section of the American Fisheries Society (AFS) in 2005 and becoming a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellow in 2015. He also was elected to the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists and served as the Secretary and member of the council from 2017-2019. With over 500 publications, Dr. Cooke is considered a world leader in fisheries and has made substantial contributions to deepen our understanding of conserving freshwater biodiversity.

Professor Pamela Soltis is a highly respected American botanist, renowned for her contributions to plant genetics and evolutionary biology. Dr. Soltis earned her bachelor’s degree in biology from Central College in 1980, graduating summa cum laude. She pursued further studies at the University of Kansas, obtaining an M.Phil. with honors in botany in 1984 and a Ph.D. in botany in 1986. After her Ph.D.,  she began her academic career as an assistant professor in the Department of Botany at Washington State University in 1986. She was promoted to associate professor in 1992 and to full professor in 1998 in the Department of Botany and School of Biological Sciences. In 2000, she joined the University of Florida and the Florida Museum of Natural History as a  c curator. At the University of Florida, she served as the University of Florida Research Foundation Research Professor from 2006 to 2009 and co-directed the UF Computational Biology Program from 2009 to 2012.  Professor Soltis’s focuses primarily on the patterns and processes that shaped the tree of life, particularly studying the diversity and evolution of angiosperms (flowering plants). She employs genomic methods, natural history collections, and computational modeling to explore phylogeny, phylogeography, and polyploidy of angiosperms. Having published over 400 scientific papers, Soltis is recognized for her influential contributions to the understanding of genetic and genomic attributes in the success of polyploids.Soltis has also held significant positions in various scientific societies. She served as the president of the Botanical Society of America in 2007–08 and has been involved with the Society for the Study of Evolution, the American Society of Plant Taxonomists, the American Genetics Association, and the Society of Systematic Biologists, serving as its president as well.  Additionally, she has contributed as an associate editor for the journals "Evolution" and "Systematic Biology" and is a member of the University of Kansas Women’s Hall of Fame. Her work has been recognized with several awards. She received the 2002 Dahlgren Prize in Botany from the Royal Physiographic Society of Sweden and, along with her husband Douglas Soltis, won the 2006 Asa Gray Award. Soltis was named a highly cited researcher by Reuters in 2014 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016.

Dr. Pat Wright is a scientist and distinguished professor in the Department of Anthropology at
Stony Brook University, New York and is the Founder and Executive Director of the Centre Valbio, a research and training center in Ranomafana, Madagascar. Current research includes investigating the growth, tooth eruption patterns, and ontogeny of various lemur species, the nutritional composition of lemur foods, the relationship between lemur foods and medicinal plants, the role of parasites on populations, and the effects of habitat disturbance on lemur populations. Wright also conducts biodiversity surveys in tropical forests of Madagascar to address conservation problems. She has received the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship and three medals of honor from the Malagasy government. After Wright discovered a new species of lemur in 1986, she helped establish its habitat as a national park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. She has published over 200 scientific papers, authored four books, ad has given hundreds of lectures to museums, universities, and societies throughout the US and Europe.

Dr. Nancy Grimm is an inter- and transdisciplinary ecosystem ecologist and Virginia M. Ullman Regents Professor of Ecology at Arizona State University. Dr. Grimm studies the interactions of climate change, human activities, resilience, and biogeochemical processes in desert and urban stream ecosystems. She was founding director of the Central Arizona–Phoenix Long-term Ecological Research program and served as its principal investigator for 19 years. She co-directed the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network from 2015–2022 and now co-directs the international network of networks, NATURA (NATure-based solutions for Urban Resilience in the Anthropocene) and the graduate scholars network, Earth Systems Science for the Anthropocene (ESSA). Dr. Grimm is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the Society for Freshwater Science, and the Ecological Society of America. She is a past president of the Ecological Society of America and the North American Benthological Society (now Society for Freshwater Science), past program director for the U.S. National Science Foundation, and senior scientist for the U.S. Global Change Research Program. She was awarded the 2019 Sustainability Science Award from the Ecological Society of America as part of an international team consensus on how ecological research in urban areas can improve sustainability and resilience to natural disasters. Grimm is known for her support of long-term research, and her dedication to mentorship and collaboration. Along with her colleagues and students, Grimm has made greater than 200 contributions to scientific literature.

Dr. Maria Diuk-Wasser is a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution & Environmental
Biology at Columbia University. She earned a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of California,
Los Angeles and completed her post-doctoral training in Epidemiology & Public Health at Yale
University. She was an assistant professor in the Division of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health before moving to her current position at Columbia.  Professor Diuk-Wasser is interested in elucidating the environmental and anthropogenic factors driving the emergence of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases. Her research integrates laboratory, field and a range of modeling approaches to predict human disease risk. Her current focus is on how pathogen interactions at multiple scales (within host, population, community and regionally) influence the recent  emergence of tick-borne pathogens in the United States. In endemic areas, she studies how human behavior and landscape modification influence human infection and disease. Her current research focuses on tick-borne pathogens, but she has also
worked on West Nile virus, malaria, dengue and leptospirosis. Other research interests include landscape ecology, population and community ecology, evolutionary ecology, behavioral ecology and conservation biology.