Curator of Zoology (Fishes) at The Field Museum of Natural History, Mark has been at The Field Museum of Natural History for 17 years, and has served as the head of the Fish Division for 10 years. During his time at the museum, Mark has been heavily involved in research and has authored over 70 scientific publications on marine and freshwater fishes, biomechanics of several animal groups, and evolution. In particular his research has focused on understanding the biodiversity, function and history of life on coral reefs.
Associate Curator in the Department of Botany at The Field Museum of Natural History, Rick's research focuses on plant systematics and evolution, emphasizing phylogenetics and biogeography. He has an active field program in the mountains of south-central China, and uses DNA sequences and other kinds of data to study the diversification of species there. He also enjoys thinking about and writing software for phylogenetic inference.
Audrey comes to the Biodiversity Synthesis Center after three years as a research scientist at Louisiana State University where she studied the evolution and systematics of corbulid bivalves. Audrey received her doctorate in Integrative Biology from U.C. Berkeley in 2003 for her research on the systematics and feeding ecology of naticid gastropods. Audrey manages the Center's day-to-day activities, including the proposal submission process and meeting coordination.
Darolyn arrived from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, where she worked as a Curatorial Assistant for five years at the Marine Biodiversity Processing Center. She has traveled to Fiji to work on an Artificial Reef Matrix System project, to Palau for an Isopoda project and to Montana to dig up some Tyrannosaurus rex bones. Darolyn received her bachelor's in Women's Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her love of studying crustaceans is only surpassed by her love for eating them.
Karen is a computational phylogeneticist. Her research focuses on developing methods for inferring evolutionary trees, especially using large, complex data sets. She doesn't have a formal connection to any particular group of organisms, although she has been seen associating with plant biologists. One of her goals at BioSynC is to incorporate evolutionary information surrounding the Tree of Life into the Encyclopedia of Life.
Torsten's expertise is the taxonomy, phylogeny, and biodiversity of Asiloidea flies (Insecta: Diptera) and his research has focused in particular on “assassin”- or “robber flies” (Asilidae)—one of the largest groups of true flies. He joined the Biodiversity Synthesis Center after completing his Ph.D. in entomology at Cornell University and the American Museum of Natural History followed by a short postdoc at the same museum. He is originally from Germany and has traveled the world to study and collect flies in habitats ranging from hot deserts to temperate forests and subtropical grasslands to tropical rain-forests.
Josh completed his doctorate at Boston University and has done extensive research on the biogeography and conservation of Melanesian coral reef fishes, working in the “Coral Triangle” biodiversity hotspot. His primary research combines phylogenetics, molecular systematics and biogeography to drive innovative biodiversity research as well as resources for conservationists.
Jim is a broadly trained herpetologist (although clearly he is into turtles). He recently completed a postdoc in molecular systematics at the Joint Genome Institute following his PhD work in paleontology at U.C. Berkeley. Before that he studied geology at the University of Rhode Island. He is primarily interested in how human activities impact our ability to reconstruct natural patterns of reptile diversity (through extinction), distribution (through extirpation and exotic introduction), and phylogenetic relationships (through genetic pollution).
Kris is the Biodiversity Informatics Specialist at BioSynC. He has a B.S.E. in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan and a M.S. in computer science from DePaul University. He is currently working on developing new tree visualization tools for phylogenetic trees and also maintains this very site.
Alta is concerned with helping to make the knowledge about biodiversty that is available on the EOL more accessible to people from all walks of life by reaching out to people outside the scientific community.
Beth Sanzenbacher is a Coral Reef Specialist for the Encyclopedia of Life's Biodiversity Synthesis Center at The Field Museum. She received her BS from the University of Illinois U-C in microbiology focusing on coral disease and the biodiversity of hot spring environments. She then continued her science career as a field assistant for an animal behavior project in Israel, which focused on the role of hormones in social hierarchies. She then left the lab and field to become a middle and high school science teacher.
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