Board of Directors

Jonathan Coddington

Senior Scientist, National Museum of Natural History
Director, Global Genome Initiative

Dr. Coddington is the Director of the Global Genome Initiative and Senior Scientist in the Department of Entomology. The Global Genome Initiative (GGI) — organized by the Smithsonian Institution as part of its Institute for Biodiversity Genomics — seeks to “preserve and understand the genomic diversity of life.” With partners and collaborators, it aims to sample key branches of the Tree of Life phylogenetically and synoptically via a global network of biorepositories and research organizations. Specifics goals are to preserve samples of all families and 50% of described genera; to make these collections available for research, with appropriate access and benefit sharing (ABS); to increase computational support and technological capacity to sequence genomes; and to train the next generation of genomics researchers in biodiversity science.

His research spans four broad topics: the systematics and evolution of spiders, especially orbweavers; issues in systematic theory and method; the theory and design of biological inventories; and, most recently, biodiversity genomics. As a museum scientist, his work focuses on the design and evaluation of rapid, efficient, quantitative sampling protocols to better understand the structure and distribution of biodiversity. Finally, the rapidly developing field of genomics will transform biodiversity science and museum science, from the field to the laboratory.

Paul Hebert

Canada Research Chair, University of Guelph
Scientific Director, iBOL

Paul Hebert has 30 years of experience in the oversight of major research and academic units including Director of the Great Lakes Institute at the University of Windsor, Chair of the Department of Zoology at the University of Guelph, Board Chair at the Huntsman Marine Science Centre, and Founding Director of the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario. He currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Molecular Biodiversity at Guelph where he is a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and Director of the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics. Over his career, he has trained more than 100 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and has received more than $100 million in research grants. Since 2000, his research has focused on the development and application of DNA-based identification systems.  Since 2010, he has been Scientific Director of the International Barcode of Life consortium, which conducts the largest research programs ever undertaken in biodiversity science. His nearly 500 publications have attracted 64,000 citations, generating an h-index of 104. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and received the 2018 Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences. He holds honorary degrees from the Universities of Waterloo, Western, and Windsor.

Dan Janzen

DiMaura Professor of Conservation Biology, University of Pennsylvania
Co-coordinator, BioAlfa

Dan Janzen is a tropical ecologist and biodiversity conservationist with 66 years of field experience and 545 scientific papers and books, all focused on the interactions of tropical animals and plants, and for the past 33 years, on their permanent in-situconservation as well.  He is a world level authority on the taxonomy and biology of tropical caterpillars, a member of the US and the Costa Rican National Academy of Sciences, and recipient of the Crafoord Prize (1984), the Kyoto Prize (1997), BBVA Prize (2012) and Blue Planet Prize (2014, with Costa Rica’s INBio). He and his biologist wife Dr. Winnie Hallwachs are co-architects and co-constructors, along with hundreds of others, of Area de Conservacion Guanacaste (ACG) and of Costa Rica’s INBio (Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad).  These efforts, along with ACG, are morphing into BioAlfa, an effort to render the entire country of Costa Rica bioliterate by it coming to know all the biodiversity that is in it, largely through DNA barcoding and national participation.   He is President of the Guanacaste Dry Forest Conservation Fund (GDFCF), the US-based NGO for ACG. Janzen and Hallwachs are currently focused on facilitating iBOL efforts to DNA barcode all species of the world for their identification and species discovery by anyone anywhere at any time, and simultaneously, on facilitating Costa Rica’s willingness to permanently conserve the 4% of the world’s biodiversity that lives on 25% of its national property, and do it through BioAlfa as a global example of sustainable non-damaging use of tropical wildland biodiversity.

Wolfgang Wägele

Director, Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig

Wolfgang Wägele spent much of his childhood in Columbia, but received his PhD from Kiel University and his Habilitation from the University of Oldenburg. He held a professorship in animal systematics at the University of Bielefeld from 1991-1996 before his appointment as as Chair of Systematic Zoology at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. He relocated to Bonn in 2004 where he is Director of the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig and Chair of Systematic Zoology at the University of Bonn. His research has focused on morphological and molecular taxonomy, systematics theory, and techniques for biodiversity monitoring with an emphasis on marine crustaceans. Wolfgang has sustained a very active involvement in field expeditions, coupling studies of biodiversity in the Antarctic and South Atlantic Oceans with work in rain forests of Ecuador and Tanzania. He leads the German Barcode of Life Network, an alliance of museum and university researchers that have made a major contribution to the iBOL consortium.

Adrian Forsyth

Executive Director and Founder of Andes Amazon Fund

Adrian Forsyth is the Executive Director and Founder of Andes Amazon Fund.  His fieldwork and conservation efforts have taken place in the most remote regions of the New World and Old World tropics for the past 45 years.  Adrian co-founded the Andes-Amazon Initiative at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Amazon Conservation Association, and Osa Conservation.  He has served as Vice President of blue moon fund, Director of Biodiversity at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and Vice President of Conservation International.  He has also worked as a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Institution and the Royal Ontario Museum and has been a faculty member at Arizona State University in the Department of Zoology.  Adrian is the author of nine acclaimed natural history books and has developed five biological field stations in the Amazon and in Central America.  Adrian currently serves as President of the Board of the Amazon Conservation Association and is Board Chairman of Osa Conservation.  He received his Ph.D. in Tropical Ecology from Harvard University under E.O. Wilson, a renowned biologist.

Sir Charles Godfray

Director, Oxford Martin School
Professor of Population Biology at Oxford University.

Sir Charles Godfray is Director of the Oxford Martin School and Professor of Population Biology at Oxford University. He has broad interests in science and the interplay of science and policy, and has spent his career at Oxford University and Imperial College. His research has involved experimental and theoretical studies in population and community ecology, epidemiology, and evolutionary biology. He is particularly interested in food security and chaired the Lead Expert Group of the UK Government Office of Science’s Foresight project on the Future of Food and Farming. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001 and knighted in 2017.  He is obsessed by the biology and taxonomy of small parasitoid wasps.