Professional Members
Dr. Alonso Aguirre
Dr. Alonso Aguirre is Chair and Professor, Department of Environmental Science and Policy at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia, where he heads a program of collaborative research that focuses on the ecology of wildlife diseases and the links to human health and conservation of biodiversity. He also serves as the Chair of the University IACUC. A veterinarian by training, he received his M.S. and Ph.D. in wildlife biology and protected area management from Colorado State University. His research has been instrumental in revealing the impact of emerging diseases of marine wildlife populations. He co-founded the emerging discipline of conservation medicine and edited both seminal books on the topic. He has published over 160 peer-reviewed papers, books and chapters and has advised governments of several countries in the Americas, Southeast Asia and Western Europe and briefed the Mexican and US Congress.
Dr. Cristián Bonacic
Dr. Cristian Bonacic is head of the Department of Ecosystems and the Environment at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, where he oversees the graduate Conservation and Wildlife Management Programme. Bonacic completed his DPhil at Oxford on the behavior of vicunas, with special reference to the sustainable use of their fleece and assessment of their welfare during shearing. He has created a research group in Chile, Fauna Australis, to work on such issues as species conservation and climate change-linked forest fires.
Lorena Calvo
Lorena Calvo gained her degree in Biology from Del Valle University in Guatemala. After several years of working at La Aurora National Zoo in Guatemala City (latterly as its Director), Lorena gained a Fulbright Scholarship to study for a Masters degree in Tropical Ecology at the University of Missouri in St Louis. On her return, Lorena founded a new NGO, the CCBG (Center for Conservation of Biology in Guatemala). CCBG’s research work focuses on the biodiversity and ecological dynamics of coffee plantations. Coffee is the main income crop in Guatemala. Appropriate management of these plantations can help to mitigate the extinction of species. Currently there is little even basic knowledge of what flora and fauna exist – in fact Lorena herself wrote the first two books in Spanish on Guatemalan wildlife.
Dr. Damayanti Buchori
Dr. Damayanti Buchori is professor of entomology/biological control at Department of Plant Protection, Faculty of Agriculture, Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), Indonesia. Her research interest are insect ecology, particularly as it relates to land use. Her research focus spans from applied agricultural research of biological control and insect pest management, host parasite interaction, pollination ecology, to insect diversity and land use change. In the last 10 years the focus of her research has expanded to research on insect diversity and conservation on small islands. Currently, she is also a Head of Biological Control Laboratory at Dep.of Plant Protection, IPB and serve as supervisor of graduate and post graduate students at IPB.