Plenary Speakers

Talk Title: Life finds a way: Using interdisciplinary methods to understand carnivore coexistence with people

Christine Wilkinson is a conservation biologist and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Environmental Sciences, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include multidisciplinary mapping, human-wildlife conflict, carnivore movement ecology, and using participatory methods for more effective and inclusive conservation outcomes. Christine has spent the last decade working in conservation biology and natural resource management around the USA and in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. She has also served in various capacities as an educator, including piloting and implementing dynamic programs for teenagers and young adults at the California Academy of Sciences and around East Africa. During her experiences, she has developed a passion for conducting applied participatory research and for empowering community-created solutions to our world’s conservation challenges. For her current research, Christine is using remote sensing and GIS analyses in conjunction with participatory mapping to understand landscape permeability for carnivores, the dynamics of livestock predation instances and perceived human-hyena conflict risk, and the intersections between human and carnivore resource needs in and around Lake Nakuru National Park, Kenya.

Talk Title: What kills the buzz in the meadow? An evolutionary ecology approach to bumble bee health and declines

Ben Sadd is currently an Associate Professor of Infectious Disease Ecology in the School of Biological Sciences at Illinois State University, after joining ISU in the Fall of 2013. He hails from the wild flatlands of Eastern England, where he grew up and became engrossed by the natural world and its interactions. He received his MSc in 2004 from the University of Sheffield, U.K., and his PhD in 2008 from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland. Subsequently, he was a Post-Doctoral researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, a Junior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Berlin, Germany, and, returning to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, a Senior Research Associate. Ben is an evolutionary ecologist with a particular fascination with infectious diseases and what contributes to variation in outcomes of infection. He focuses on insects as a model system, and has studied bumble bee immunity, health, and disease since 2004. He is also interested in sexual selection and sexual conflict, and has researched these topics in beetles and crickets. Specific details of the research by Ben and his group can be found on their website and through his Google Scholar page. Ben and his research group believe that a diverse perspective and broad communication of science is critical, and regularly take part in outreach events, including with local schools and conservation organizations.