Rosemary G. Gillespie is the Director of the Essig Museum of Entomology and is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on the evolutionary biology and conservation of arthropods, with emphasis on spiders on oceanic islands. The primary goal is to clarify the factors that affect gains or losses in biodiversity. Projects examine patterns of species formation and community assembly, invasion and impacts of invasive species, and extinction. She received here B.Sc. in Zoology from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and her Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Academic Coordinator

Mitchell received her Ph.D. in Zoology from the UC Berkeley, where she studied animal behavior and ecology. She has studied the behavior of monkeys in Panama, Costa Rica, Peru, and Kenya, and done research on forest ecology in Caribbean mangroves. She has taught natural history and environmental science at UC Berkeley and has worked in elementary school science classrooms. She enjoys sharing what she and others can learn about the natural world with students of all ages. Because children are naturals as scientists, she finds it especially satisfying to be bringing hands-on, exploratory science activities to middle and high school classes.

Science and Education Mentor

Prior to this position, Scotchmoor was a 7th and 8th grade Science teacher for 25 years. Her love of paleontological fieldwork was contagious to her students and became the basis of her science curriculum, naturally integrating multiple disciplines of science. Judy also recognizes the use of technology as a tool to teach and to learn. Now, at the museum, her roles are many, but her primary interest remains the use of paleontology as a vehicle for improving science education in the classroom.

Museum & Field Station Directors

Roy is a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology, and his research interests lie in tropical marine invertebrate behavior and ecology. His current work focuses on the behavioral ecology of stomatopod crustaceans, a group of tropical marine predators commonly known as mantis shrimp. More recently, his research has expanded to include the evolution of mating systems, sensory ecology, larval biology, and studies of the genetic structure of stomatopod populations as a means to deduce the timing and pathways of dispersal. Roy serves, along with Dave Lindberg, as the Principal Investigator of the Understanding Evolution website.

Paul Licht is the Director of the UC Botanical Garden and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Integrative Biology. Before becoming involved in the Garden, he spent 40 years researching in the area of environmental physiology and comparative endocrinology of reproduction, including a wide array of vertebrate animals, especially amphibians, reptiles and mammals. He served for the past eight years as Dean of Biological Sciences and Executive Dean of the College of Letters and Science where he was responsible for undergraduate programs.

Dr. Lindbergs’s research interests focus on the evolution of select organisms (mostly Mollusca), and the resultant interactions between organisms and their habitats through time. He has done research and field work for more than 15 years along much of the eastern Pacific margin. Additionally he is the PI on three K–12 outreach projects at UCMP, focusing on the use of technology to increase access to scientific resources. He received a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Brent D. Mishler is Director of the University and Jepson Herbaria at UC Berkeley, as well as a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology, where he teaches phylogenetic systematics and plant diversity. A native southern Californian, he received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1984, then was on the faculty at Duke University for nine years before moving to UC Berkeley in 1993. His research interests are in the systematics, evolution, and ecology of bryophytes, especially the diverse moss genus Tortula, as well as in the phylogeny of green plants and the theory of systematics. His large and active lab applies methods ranging from microscopy and computer-assisted morphometrics, through growth experiments and DNA sequencing. He and his graduate students are heavily involved in public outreach in areas of plant evolution, ecology (emphasizing water stress), and ethnobotany.

Craig Moritz is an evolutionary biologist with interests spanning historical biogeography, speciation, molecular ecology and systematics, as well as application of concepts from these fields to conservation. Major studies over the past 20 or so years have included analyses of chromosomal speciation in gecko lizards, evolutionary origins and consequences of parthenogenesis in reptiles, historical biography of a rainforest fauna, and conservation genetics of a variety of organisms. Since moving from Australia to UC Berkeley (as Director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology) he has developed interests in the use of the web to share information from museum collections and in using these unique historical collections to understand how humans are affecting biodiversity.

Mary Power is Director of the California Biodiversity Center and the Angelo Coast Range Reserve. She is also a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology, where she teaches ecology. Her research focused on river food webs, in particular the interactions among fish, birds, invertebrates, and algae in temperate and tropical rivers and the impacts of invading alien species. Much of her current field work takes place in the South Fork Eel River, within the Angelo Coast Range Reserve in Mendocino, CA, one of the University of California Natural Reserve System's 34 research and teaching reserves.