Paul is Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Paul is also on the leadership team of US National Science Foundation’s National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis, coordinating post-doctoral activities including professional development opportunities for the institute’s fellows.

Paul has worked in universities in Britain, Australia and the US. Paul’s research examines how ecology and economics can be integrated to inform more effective conservation and natural resource management strategies. His research group collaborates closely with partners around the world drawn from public agencies, nonprofits and for profits as well as academics from a range of disciplines. Paul has authored more than 90 peer reviewed publications and participated in relevant national and international science panels.

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Julien Brun is a scientific programmer at NCEAS, where he assists scientific research according to data science best practices. The core of his work is to understand and solve working group participants’ data and computing challenges. He advises and trains groups on how to clean, structure, combine and analyze their heterogeneous data sets, as well as scaling their analysis. He is also an instructor for NCEAS’ data science trainings, helping scientists improve their programming and data management skills.

Julien’s scientific expertise is in ecohydrology, Earth observation techniques (remote sensing and GIS) and process-based models. Prior to conducting his PhD on the ecohydrological impacts of tropical cyclones in the Southeastern US, he conducted several projects on land cover change, vegetation monitoring and disaster mapping for governmental and international institutions.

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Samantha Cheng is a biodiversity scientist at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History. She is an interdisciplinary conservation scientist whose research draws from the biological, social, and computer sciences, to understand connections between nature and human well-being, the drivers of marine biodiversity and evolution, and builds tools and assessments for evidence-based conservation decisions. In particular, she focuses on evidence synthesis methodologies and computational and visualization approaches for improving science communication, working in close collaboration with practitioner agencies and organizations. She has published on a number of different areas focusing on the links between conservation and human well-being, and improving knowledge on impacts of conservation.

Previously, she worked on squid fisheries and marine diversification projects in California and Southeast Asia. She is also a former SNAPP postdoctoral researcher and a member of the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence.

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Fabrice is science director of EAT Foundation, a collaboration between the Stockholm Resilience Center, the Stordalen Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust, and a Senior Scientist with Bioversity International. His research focuses on food as the “gateway drug” to sustainability – and how changes in human diet can be leverages as a means of supporting food systems that can provide healthy food to a 9 billion global population within planetary boundaries.

Fabrice is a contributing author to both the Africa and Global Assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). He also serves as a contributing author to the TEEB AgriFood interim reports. He holds academic research positions with CATIE in Costa Rica, Columbia University in New York, and with the University of Idaho.

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Jane is Senior Manager for Climate Change and Sustainability Services at Ernst and Young where she leads natural capital measurement and management strategies to support public and private sector client needs. Before joining Ernst and Young, she was the director of the Ecosystem Services program and lead of SNAPP at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). She co-led one of the first two SNAPP teams on Coastal Defenses and has participated in two other SNAPP teams in Tanzania and Rwanda.

Throughout her career, “Carter” has worked with diverse partners a to measure and value the benefits provided by nature to support decision making and to design and implement social, political and financial incentives that promote sustainable development in Costa Rica, England, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, the Seychelles, Sri Lanka and the United States. Carter has consulted for the Spatial Informatics Group, Environmental Defense, World Wide Fund for Nature-UK and Oxford Analytica and has taught courses on ecosystem services and poverty reduction at Columbia University and New York University. She serves on the Technical Advisory Committee for the United Nations Development Program’s Equator Initiative, the Global Advisory Board for Womensphere and is a co-leader of a Powell Center/SESYNC working group focused on developing a natural capital accounting system for the US.

She obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; a Master of Science degree in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford; a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford; and completed a Post-Doctoral fellowship at the Earth Institute of Columbia University in New York.

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Carrie is a Research Biologist and Senior Fellow at NCEAS and member of the Center for Marine Assessment and Planning at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Carrie currently leads the multi-institution collaboration, Ocean Tipping Points project, aimed at integrating our growing understanding of tipping points in marine ecosystems into ocean management through practical tools and approaches.

She is passionate about helping diverse groups come together to solve challenging problems and provides facilitation services to SNAPP teams, drawing upon her long history leading and participating in interdisciplinary, collaborative team science projects.

Prior to beginning her research career, Carrie was an environmental educator for both Teton Science Schools and Ogden Nature Center. She has served on the board of Ecology Project International and Teton Science Schools.

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Yuta is a policy scientist with TNC. His research explores the intersection of international development policy, environmental policy, and social policy, with an emphasis on gender, quantitative methods, and microeconomics. Yuta focuses on investigating the impacts and links between conservation programs, the environment, and human well-being.

Formerly, Yuta conducted research on water infrastructure, time use, and gender in Ethiopia. He also served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Republic of Georgia and worked as an Economics Research Assistant at RTI International. Yuta has published in many economic and policy journals and has experience working on projects with a range of stakeholders in Africa, Asia, and Central Europe.

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Melissa is the lead social scientist at the University of Washington Sea Grant program, where she manages and conducts a program of applied human dimensions research and engages with coastal communities of the West Coast. Her research areas are accounting for human well-being in marine ecosystems with a particular focus on cultural dimensions; restoring biocultural relationships in coastal ecosystems; and understanding community vulnerability and resilience to ocean change. Melissa earned a PhD and Masters degrees in environmental anthropology at the University of Washington, and holds Bachelors degrees in Sociology and Spanish. She has over 20 years of community-based participatory research experience working with communities on resource management and sustainable livelihoods in marine and forest ecosystems in rural and urban geographies throughout Western North America (Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, Mexico and Central America.)

Melissa edited the book Conservation for the Anthropocene ocean: Interdisciplinary science in support of nature and people with Phil Levin, a collection in a larger body of research (including more than 30 publications in venues ranging from Science to Human Ecology), which is committed to integrating social and ecological sciences for sustainable human-nature interactions. Melissa contributes to the social science research needs and priorities of NOAA, Northwest coastal tribes and Indigenous co-managers, the California Current Integrated Ecosystem Assessment, and the Puget Sound Partnership. She has been a core member of multiple NCEAS working groups, including the Ocean Tipping Points project and the State of Alaska’s Salmon and People (SASAP) project.

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Priya Shyamsundar is Lead Economist at the Nature Conservancy. At TNC, she leads a Global Science team that undertakes research on the economics of conservation and helps conservation practitioners across TNC use economic instruments and analyses in their work. Priya’s research covers a range of urban and rural environmental problems, with a particular focus on the economics of poverty and natural resource management. Previously, Priya was Founder Director of SANDEE, a research network that helps examine and identify solutions to shared environment-development challenges across seven countries in South Asia. She has also consulted extensively for the World Bank, most recently working with the Program on Forests to develop a comprehensive framework on forests and poverty. Priya currently serves as member, SANDEE steering committee, Nepal; Fellow, Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota, USA; and International Vice Chair of the Board, International Institute for Sustainable Development, Canada.

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James is director of Science and Research at WCS’s and is associate professor and acting director of the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science at the University of Queensland.

As a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, James explored the effects of habitat fragmentation on birds in Madagascar and Australia. Following, James served as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California – San Diego and a senior campaigner for The Wilderness Society in Australia.

James is currently president of the Society of Conservation Biology and was the founding chair of the IUCN Species Survival Commission climate change specialist group. He has published more than 150 peer reviewed and popular articles on conservation related issues, is an associate editor for various conservation and ecology journals.

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David Wilkie is Executive Director of Conservation Measures and Communities for the Wildlife Conservation Society and a visiting scholar at Boston College. He is a founder of the Conservation Measures Partnership, was a co-chair of the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force, and helped establish the Conservation Initiative on Human Rights and the WCS Institutional Review Board for human subjects’ protections. David has over 30 years of experience working in international conservation in Central Africa, Central and South America and Asia. He is a Ph.D. wildlife ecologist with a post-doctoral specialization in anthropology. He has published more than 150 peer reviewed articles and books and is currently a Special Government Employment as a member of the NASA Applied Science Advisory Committee.

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