Tim joined the Conservation Biology Institute in 2008. He has an M.S. in Geology from the University of Missouri – Columbia and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Colorado – Boulder. His experience includes porting and tuning climate modeling software on massively parallel supercomputers as well as developing high data flow applications in networked realtime environments. He is interested in developing, expanding, and linking ecological models to further the understanding of current ecosystems and to examine alternative futures in the face of climate change and human activity. In 2012, he completed an M.S. in Biology at the University of Oregon – Eugene, his research concentrated on modeling fire and its effects in the Willamette Valley.

Tim and his wife Kim share their Eugene, Oregon home with several furred and/or feathered companions of various sizes. In his spare time he occasionally paddles a sea kayak or works on building one.

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.

Brendan Ward joined the Conservation Biology Institute in December 2007 and is now a CBI associate.  He has brought experience in GIS, spatial analysis, ecological modeling, and software development to the institute.  Brendan has a passion for harnessing computer power to advance conservation science and ecological research.  He aspires to contribute to model and data fusion, to enable a greater degree of synthesis and cross-pollination across disciplines to fully catapult ecology into the information age.

Kai Foster is a Project Manager/GIS Analyst with professional and academic experience working with diverse communities on a broad range of environmental issues. In 2008, she joined Conservation Biology Institute focusing her attention primarily on protected areas in the United States. Before joining the CBI team, Kai spent three years working with communities in Western Alaska mapping areas of cultural and ecological significance. Her interest in the relationship between people and landscapes has brought an appreciation and understanding to her current work in protected areas.     

Jerre has worked with CBI for 16 years as a conservation ecologist in endangered species research and landscape-scale conservation planning and management of natural resources in the U.S., Europe, and Mexico. She is passionate about developing and orchestrating partnerships among the academic community, government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and land managers to leverage funds and information for achieving conservation goals. Throughout her career, Jerre has researched and developed priorities for conservation and funding in California and Baja California, resulting in the acquisition and management of hundreds of thousands of acres for conservation, including the 240,000-acre Tejon Ranch in the Tehachapi Mountains, Donner Summit and Martis Valley in the Sierra Nevada (>15,000 acres), >100,000 acres in San Diego County, and Bahía de San Quintín in Baja California (>5,000 acres). She is project director for the Las Californias Binational Conservation Initiative which promotes creation of a binational park along the Peninsular Ranges of California and Baja-California. She has directed conservation planning, management, and monitoring for California’s Natural Community Conservation Planning programs in southern California, developed a regional program for coordinating management and monitoring in San Diego County, and currently works with land managers and researchers to develop management and monitoring plans for these programs. She coordinated development of the population monitoring framework for the six subspecies of Island Fox on the California Channel Islands and, through a grant from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, developed a science-based regional planning framework for wind energy in the Tehachapi Mountains and southern Sierra Nevada. She serves as a science and education advisor for several land trusts. As a member of the board of Terra Peninsular, she is active in conservation in Baja California.

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.