Nik grew up in rural Eastern Washington, and took an early interest in computers and programming. He followed this passion throughout childhood and into college, attending The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA and studying software design and media. While at Evergreen, Nik found a job working on software to manage and visualize environmental data. This introduced him to the challenges of collecting, organizing, and communicating scientific data, and the roles that software and technology can play in addressing these needs.

Nik moved to Corvallis and joined the Conservation Biology Institute in June of 2010. He works as a software engineer on the Data Basin team and enjoys tackling the many challenges addressed by the project. He also tends to CBI’s growing technology needs. Outside of work, Nik pursues a variety of other software projects and enjoys the many nearby mountains, cycling, and tap dancing.

Dr. Comendant is a Senior Scientist with 15 years of experience in research, communication, and organizational capacity building.  Her program and project work is at the nexus of conservation science and technology.  She has a proven track record developing innovative methods, tools, databases, and science-based solutions that increase knowledge-transfer, enhance stakeholder engagement, and inform natural resource management decisions.  Skills and experience include:

Dr. Comendant received her Ph.D. from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz where she studied life history evolution.  She received her B.A. from UC Berkeley in Integrative Biology. She lives with her husband and their twins in Napa, California.

Specialties:  ecology, evolution, protected areas and easements, online data sharing, visualization, and collaboration platforms and tools, island ecology, invasive species, herpetology, social media, inbound marketing, and landscape-scale informatic assessments.

Jim Strittholt is Co-Founder, President, and Chief Science Officer of the Conservation Biology Institute and has over 26 years’ experience in applying computer mapping technologies (including GIS and remote sensing) to address various ecological assessments and conservation planning projects in the U.S. and internationally. He holds undergraduate degrees in Botany, Zoology and Secondary Education from Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) where he also earned a Masters in Zoology in vertebrate population genetics. Jim earned a Ph.D. in 1994 from Ohio State University in a self-designed multi-disciplinary program emphasizing landscape ecology, conservation planning, and computer mapping technologies. While a truly multi-disciplinary degree, he conducted most his research and developed most of his technical skills from the Center for Mapping – a NASA Center of Excellence. While at Ohio State, he earned numerous academic achievement awards including being chosen as a University Presidential Fellow during his final year.

He has experience working with large mammals, field research on forests and vertebrates, and taught numerous science courses in high school for six years and several college courses in zoology and biology. Over the last 22 years, he has been principle investigator on numerous projects including nature reserve designs, conservation gap analyses, forest and watershed assessments, ecological modeling, and remote sensing applications in conservation. He has also authored numerous reports, peer-reviewed articles, and white papers. Finally, he has taught numerous workshops on conservation planning. Areas of expertise include conservation planning, landscape ecology, geographic information systems, and remote sensing.

Dr. Dennis Grossman is a Senior Scientist for the Conservation Biology Institute.

He has worked as a senior scientist for non-profit conservation organizations for the past 20 years, and is a recognized expert in conservation planning, biodiversity assessments, and ecological classification.  Dr. Grossman earned his Ph.D. in Plant Ecology from the University of Hawaii in conjunction with the East-West Center .  He was awarded M.S. and B.S. degrees in Botany from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Denny has made significant contributions in advancing our understanding of terrestrial, freshwater and coastal/marine ecosystems, and in the application of this knowledge for conservation and resource management.  He was instrumental in the development of the classification standards for vegetation, freshwater and coastal/marine ecosystems that are now regularly used for conservation planning and resource management by many U.S. and international organizations.  He has also focused on the development and use of appropriate technology to ensure the effective application of current scientific information for improved efficiency and effectiveness of ecological assessments and conservation plans.

Dr. Grossman has developed strong partnerships with scientists, public agencies and private corporations to develop and implement novel approaches to conservation and resource management challenges.   He has worked extensively with conservation projects and partners across North and South America, the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, South Asia and Indonesia.  An author of numerous articles and reports, Dr. Grossman serves on several federal and scientific committees.

While serving for 7 years as Vice-President for Science,  Dr. Grossman helped to build NatureServe after it was created as a spin off from the Science Division of The Nature Conservancy.  During his 12 years in the position of Chief Ecologist, Dr. Grossman successfully integrated ecological concepts to prioritize conservation actions throughout The Nature Conservancy.  He currently serves as a Senior Policy Advisor for The Nature Conservancy.

Dominique was born and raised in northern France. She received her Master’s degree in 1978 in Lille (France) and her Ph.D. in 1983 at Colorado State University working on biogeochemical cycles in the shortgrass prairie. In 1984, after a brief 3 months in Thailand teaching a simulation modeling class, she went to U.C. Riverside as a postdoc simulating nitrogen fixing shrubs in the Sonoran desert then went two years later to New Mexico State University to simulate Chihuahuan desert ecosystem processes. She was hired in 1988 as a contractor for the US EPA in Corvallis (OR) to work on climate change impacts on paddy rice ecosystems in Asia. In 1994 she spent a year working in Toulouse (France) simulating Mediterranean ecosystems. In the Fall of 1995, she started working with a USFS team simulating climate change impacts on global terrestrial systems first out of the University of New Hampshire and then out of Corvallis where she also taught at Oregon State University (OSU) as faculty in the Biological and Ecological Engineering Department. In 2000, she moved to Olympia (WA), telecommuting for her work at OSU. In the fall of 2006, she spent 2 months as invited professor in Paris. She worked as director of the Climate Change Science Team for The Nature Conservancy from January 2007 until August 2008. She went back to OSU as associate professor, continuing her simulation work on climate change impacts. In June 2009, she joined the Conservation Biology Institute. In her free time, she bikes and kayaks, hikes, skis and paints watercolors.

Dave joined the climate change research group at CBI in 2010, to continue his work of modeling the effects of climate change on natural vegetation.  He had turned to that challenge in 2001 following a long career in industry.  After 5 years in the trenches as the computer guy in the U.S. Forest Service MAPSS modeling team on the Oregon State University campus, he returned to graduate school, completing a Ph.D. in Biological and Ecological Engineering in 2009.  Using the static biogeography model MAPSS and the dynamic global vegetation model MC1, he has run simulations of potential vegetation and vegetation change for a number of areas, principally in the western U.S.  He participated in the California Scenarios 2008 project for the California Energy Commission, in a study of Yosemite National Park for the National Park Service, and in several studies of areas in Oregon, Washington, Arizona, and New Mexico for the U.S. Forest Service.  His current interests include bringing vegetation models into the Envision modeling framework developed by the BEE department at OSU.

Susan Antenen is the Conservation Biology Institute’s Sierra Nevada Project Coordinator.   Susan is helping CBI coordinate its science activities in the Sierra to deliver timely and integrated information and recommendations to public lands managers.

Susan is also the Coordinator for the Southern Sierra Partnership (SSP) comprised of CBI, The Nature Conservancy, Audubon California, Sierra Business Council, and the Sequoia Riverlands Trust.   The SSP works towards a vision of healthy vibrant towns surrounded by well-managed natural lands and thriving working farms and ranches.  

Before joining the CBI in 2010, Susan worked for The Nature Conservancy for 19 years in a number of capacities.   She started the Conservancy’s Mongolia program and grassland protected area initiative.   Before that she was the Interim Director of Maui, Hawaii.   In New York, she founded and directed one of the Conservancy’s first temperate coastal/estuarine ecosystem restoration programs in US.   Susan is a graduate of Goddard College in Vermont.

Dr. Spencer is a wildlife conservation biologist with over 35 years of professional experience in biological research and conservation planning. He specializes in the practical application of science to resources management, design and management of nature reserves, and recovery of endangered species. He has conducted numerous studies on rare and sensitive mammals, with particular focus on forest carnivores (martens and fishers) and endangered rodents (Pacific pocket mouse and Stephens’ kangaroo rat). Dr. Spencer has prepared habitat conservation plans (HCPs), habitat management plans (HMPs), and natural community conservation plans (NCCPs) for numerous sensitive species in California, including the first NCCP plan ever permitted (Poway Subarea NCCP/HCP). He also uses ecological expertise to guide large-scale efforts to conserve ecological connectivity and wildlife movement (such as the South Coast Missing Linkages Project and the California Essential Habitat Connectivity Project) as well as to restore and sustain resilient forest conditions in the face of changing climate and wildfire regimes (such as the Sierra Nevada Forest Resilience Initiative). Because he combines ecological research with real-world conservation planning experience, Dr. Spencer is often asked to lead science advisory processes for regional conservation and recovery plans, such as the California Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta Conservation Plan. He currently leads large teams working to conserve the endangered distinct population of fishers in the Sierra Nevada and the endangered Stephens’ kangaroo rat in southern California.

Heather joined CBI in August 2003. She is a landscape ecologist/GIS specialist whose work has focused on predicting effects of land management and landscape change on vertebrates with spatially explicit habitat, population, and connectivity models. She has over 10 years of experience in applied ecological GIS analysis and modeling.  Heather graduated from Middlebury College with a B.A. in environmental studies, and received master’s degrees in biology from William Paterson University and geography from Oregon State University. Her recent work at CBI has focused on the conservation of fishers, martens, and other carnivores in the Sierra Nevada.

Alexandra Syphard is a research ecologist who investigates landscape change that results from the interplay between human and natural disturbances, especially wildfire, urban development, and climate change. She uses a variety of spatial analytical and modeling methods to investigate how change has occurred in the past, how it is likely to occur in the future, and what types of ecological impacts are likely to result. She also envisions how alternate management scenarios may differentially impact the biological and social integrity of different landscapes. Alexandra works on issues related to vegetation dynamics and wildfire in Mediterranean ecosystems; fire science and ecology; effects of multiple threats to native vegetation communities; biogeography and species distribution modeling; land use / land cover change; and the influence of humans on fire regimes.

Before joining CBI in 2007, Alexandra earned her PhD in Geography from San Diego State University and the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2005. Alexandra also received a BA in English from the University of Mary Washington, a Masters of Public Health at the Medical College of Virginia, and a Masters in Environmental Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. She also completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in the Department of Forest Ecology & Management at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Biology at San Diego State.

In her free time, Alexandra enjoys playing guitar, riding her Vespa scooter, running or practicing yoga, traveling to different countries, and drinking a good cup of coffee with her family and friends.