Our Faculty

Recipient of the Cassowary Award for outstanding conservation work, Sigrid studies the ecology and behavior of Lumholtz's tree-kangaroos (including pre-release training for orphaned individuals) and the colonization of restored rainforest by wildlife along the Daintree Coast. Her earlier career in Germany focused on rodent population dynamics and chemical communication in vertebrates.

A Schlumberger Foundation fellow who used a canopy crane to study how mature rainforest trees respond to experimental drought, Deborah's research spans plant functional traits, fire ecology, and climate change biology across Brazilian and Australian forests. She now collaborates with Atherton Tablelands farmers on regenerative agriculture and food security.

Sonam helped establish two of Bhutan's first community forests in Bumthang in 2003, then spent over a decade promoting social forestry across rural districts before joining the country's leading environmental research institute (UWICER). His research on community forestry and sacred groves examines how social and ecological values intersect in Bhutanese landscapes.

Bhutan's first archaeologist and a National Geographic Explorer, Kuenga holds degrees from Harvard and Cambridge and has worked on sites across Bhutan, India, and the United States. Her research explores the complex intersections of development and conservation through sacred landscapes, ethnobotany, traditional ecological knowledge, and Gross National Happiness.

Bhutan's leading tiger biologist and a National Geographic Explorer, Tshering started the first systematic camera-trap monitoring of tigers in Royal Manas National Park and has spent over 20 years in Bhutan's wilderness. An IUCN Tiger Specialist Group member, he uses radio telemetry and non-invasive genetics to study predator-prey dynamics and population connectivity across the Himalayas.

A former Chief Forestry Officer for the Royal Government, Dean of Academic Affairs at UWICER, and member of Bhutan's National Water Resource Board, Norbu now serves as Principal Scientist for the Bhutan Ecological Society. His research examines the long-term societal impacts of climate change on biodiversity and strategies for enhancing ecosystem and community resilience.

Francisco implemented Long-Term Ecological Network stations measuring greenhouse gases for the Cape Horn International Center, then helped build a prototype alert system for glacier-related flood events with the Gaia Antarctic Research Center. He currently collaborates with the Chilean Antarctic Institute on climate variability and its impacts on glaciers and snow season across Patagonia.

A wildlife biologist who studies the breeding biology, population ecology, and conservation of shorebirds, Glenda built her research on the Two-banded Plovers of coastal Patagonia, tracking incubation, parental care, and the effects of human activity on their nesting beaches. Born in Córdoba, Argentina, she has worked in Antarctica as a research technician and sailed as an ornithologist aboard polar expedition cruises.

A geologist pursuing her PhD in geoconservation and geoheritage at the University of Minho, Portugal, Florencia studies volcanic heritage sites across Chile's Southern Volcanic Zone. Her research asks how geologically significant landscapes, especially volcanoes, can be preserved, valued, and integrated into broader conservation frameworks.

A sociologist who began as a human rights lawyer, Mary first studied gender and the environment as drivers of internal displacement and asylum, then followed the connections among food production, local development, and climate adaptation through agrotourism. Her doctoral research now focuses on food sovereignty rooted in social solidarity and circular economies, asking how just food systems can support just tourism.

Raised among coffee plantations in San Ramón, Milena studies the changing landscape of Costa Rica's Western Central Valley, where urban expansion, agriculture, and tourism reshape the forests that give communities water, stable soils, and stored carbon. Tracing how remaining forest patches keep medium- and large-sized mammals moving, she identifies priority areas where conservation can benefit biodiversity and people.

A member of the IUCN Amphibian Specialist Group for Costa Rica, Jeremy studies the chemical ecology of poison frogs, tracing the links among diet, toxin profiles, and predator defense. Since 2018 he has worked to map the country's amphibians and reptiles, from endangered populations to new species, co-describing a Bolitoglossa salamander in 2025. He also follows how avian communities change with latitudinal migration.

An Assistant Professor at the University of Primorska, Grgur has conducted boat-based dolphin research with the Blue World Institute since 2008, using photo-identification data to model population parameters, home range, habitat use, and social structure of bottlenose dolphins. He has also participated in aerial surveys of cetacean populations across the Adriatic Sea.

Manager of the Sea Turtle Rescue Center at Croatia's Blue World Institute since 2012, Mateja provides care for sick and injured loggerhead turtles and has contributed to EU-wide conservation projects including NETCET and LIFE EUROTURTLES. She served on the Organizing Committee for the 6th Mediterranean Conference on Marine Turtles.

A PhD candidate at the University of Ljubljana whose dissertation maps the spatial ecology of loggerhead sea turtles across the Adriatic using satellite and GPS-GSM tags. Matic supervised fieldwork under the LIFE EUROTURTLES project evaluating small-scale fisheries bycatch, and is investigating how climate change and alien invasive species are shifting sea turtle diets.

Maddalena spent fifteen years at the Volvo Group as a research engineer and innovation project manager before turning to sustainability research. She now studies food systems and consumer practices, from sustainable consumption in rural Italy to land tenure among pastoralists in northern Kenya. Italian by birth and long based in Sweden, she is happiest teaching students to read food, people, and place as one system.

An agronomist with Deafal, the Italian NGO for organic and regenerative agriculture, Gherardo has published on soil biodiversity, on how keyline farming curbs erosion, and on quinoa and amaranth cultivation, including a chapter in the agronomy textbook Coltivazioni erbacee (Edagricole, 2023). He has taught soil sessions at the Italy center since 2024, on rapid methods for assessing soil health in the field.

For twenty years Lorenzo has worked at the University of Siena as a technician in the Department of Biotechnologies and Chemistry. He also runs La Scoscesa, the farm he founded in 2018 in Gaiole in Chianti. He holds a diploma in permaculture design and teaches permaculture design courses across Italy, working as a consultant and teacher in landscape reading and water management.

With over 20 years and 20-plus publications in wildlife and range ecology, John joined SFS in 2000 as resident faculty at the Kilimanjaro Bush Camp. His research spans human-wildlife conflict, rangeland management, water use dynamics, and ethnobotany across the Amboseli ecosystem, with extensive consultancy work for the Kenyan government on environmental impact assessment.

Jennifer's master's research investigated the drivers of human-elephant conflict in Shimba Hills National Reserve, leading to projects that enhance local livelihoods through beekeeping and community-based resource management. She also collaborates on primatology research across Africa and brings GIS expertise to mapping species ecology and protected area dynamics.

Lucy's doctoral thesis explores how coastal tourism in Kenya can adapt to climate change with a focus on equity, justice, and community-led solutions. She is editor of Sustainable Tourism Dialogues in Africa (De Gruyter, 2022) and uses participatory workshops and individual mental modeling to co-design conservation solutions with local communities.

As an undergraduate, Daniel witnessed the dramatic decline of Panamanian amphibians from chytrid fungus, an experience that shaped his entire career. Through his master's, PhD, and postdoctoral work he studied how amphibians manage to coexist with the pathogen, focusing on the protective bacteria that live on frog skin and how altitude, pathogen genetics, and habitat loss shape the defense those microbes provide.

An evolutionary ecologist drawn to how marine species adapt to a changing ocean, Eirlys spent an undergraduate year in a bioacoustics lab in Hawaiʻi before interning at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Her PhD examined how coral reef fishes adapt across the Isthmus of Panama, with fieldwork on both coasts including Bocas del Toro. A postdoc in Sicily followed, tracking the Mediterranean mussel under climate change.

Holly served as a Peace Corps marine conservation educator in a rural indigenous community in Bocas del Toro, an experience that rooted her in the region and now informs her role as cultural liaison. Trained in anthropology with a zoology minor from UT Austin, she brings fieldwork in primate behavior and an MA in Environmental Studies from Prescott College to community-centered conservation education.

A Peruvian biologist whose mammal work spans the country, from biodiversity assessments to management plans, Cecilia saw firsthand how much conservation depends on the people who live alongside it. Her research traces the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem services in indigenous communities, giving forest managers better information and grounding sustainable development in local traditions.

A Costa Rican biologist at home in cloud forest, lowland rainforest, and páramo, Raquel came to wildlife ecology as a volunteer monitoring wild cats and helping farmers coexist with them. Her master’s research traced how landscape and management shape the distribution of mammals in a forest reserve on the Osa Peninsula. She also works in ecotourism and environmental education, and has guest lectured for SFS.

Trained as both engineer and anthropologist in the interdisciplinary field of international water management, Edwin pairs technical and social science perspectives, and qualitative methods with quantitative ones. An academic trainer, freelance researcher, and creative entrepreneur, he teaches with lively examples drawn from his own research experiences across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe.

In collaboration with Wageningen University and Peru's Pontificia Universidad Católica, Sonja has conducted extensive research on hydrosocial territories, examining power dynamics and perceptions surrounding water in urban and rural areas. Her work includes studying the impact of Payment for Ecosystem Services schemes on local conservation and livelihoods, through the lens of environmental justice, ecofeminism, and indigenous rights.

Before joining SFS in 2010, John served as Zonal Manager for forestry and beekeeping extension under Tanzania's Ministry of Natural Resources, and successfully established two of the country's first pilot Wildlife Management Areas through the Ugalla Community Conservation Project. He now manages community relationships across the Tarangire-Manyara ecosystem and serves as Deputy Center Director.

With 22 years in wildlife management, Egidius's master's investigated how the international ivory trade ban affected hippo populations in the Katavi-Rukwa-Lukwati ecosystem; his PhD examines rodent communities in maize fields and grasslands of the western Serengeti. He and colleagues now run a long-term small mammal ecology project at SFS Tanzania, using rodents as indicators of environmental change.

Yuqian is an interdisciplinary scholar and educator trained in fisheries, wildlife, environmental policy, and software engineering. He integrates natural, social, and data sciences to translate complex datasets into practical conservation insights. Affiliated with the LTER Network, his work addresses marine conservation and sustainability challenges and has been published in Nature Communications and Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

A marine ecological data scientist from the UK, Ben studied Biological Sciences at Oxford before a PhD at Exeter on how fishing behavior shifts once offshore wind farms go up, pairing ecological and spatial data. Earlier work put him on coral reefs in the Bahamas, Indonesia, and Timor-Leste. A compulsive identifier of fish, birds, and whatever else crosses his path, he takes any excuse to get back in the water.

Sophie's doctoral research, in partnership with Operation Wallacea, asks why some Honduran reefs hold up better than expected under stress. She has worked on reef conservation projects in Honduras, Indonesia, and the Seychelles, running benthic and fish surveys, mapping reef structure in 3D, and restoring coral. She also teaches in the water and arrives in South Caicos keen to add seagrass and mangroves to her range.