Chris Clarke Director, Co-founder 

Bio to come

James M. André Co-founder, Science Advisory Board chair

Director of the University of California’s Granite Mountains Desert Research Center since 1994, Jim has been instrumental in developing the Center into one of the leading research and teaching facilities in the UC Natural Reserve System.  He oversees more than 170 current research projects at the Center.  Jim’s academic training is in plant ecology, conservation biology, and natural areas management.

He is a recognized authority on the flora of the Mojave and Southern Great Basin Deserts, and has over 30 years of field experience throughout the desert southwest of California, Nevada, and Arizona. In addition to discovering several new species to science, he is author of A Flora of the Mojave National Preserve. He is currently working on a flora of the entire Mojave Desert including the Owens Valley and Eastern Sierra.

Jim’s current research focuses on plant taxonomy, population demographics of long-lived desert shrubs, conservation biology of rare plants, and restoration ecology (particularly systems impacted by livestock grazing and invasive species).  Jim coordinates numerous field teaching programs annually, and has taught more than 20 university-level courses in botany, plant ecology, field sampling theory, and natural history courses based out of UC Riverside, UC Berkeley, UCLA, UNLV and CSU Humboldt. He has taught numerous advanced field workshops and training seminars in botany, including seven UC Jepson Herbarium Workshops. Jim also serves as the Senior Advisor to the statewide California Native Plant Society's Rare Plant Program (RPP) and is Chair of the RPP Committee. He is a member of the Steering Committee of Solar Done Right.

Science Advisory Board members

(alphabetical, affiliation listed for identification purposes only)

James M. André (See bio above)

Rob Fulton, California State University Desert Studies Center (Zzyzx) (bio to come)

Margaret H. (Maggie) Fusari  

Dr. Fusari is retired from UC Santa Cruz where she worked as the Director of the UCSC Natural Reserves, and as a lecturer in Biology and Environmental Studies. In addition to research on the California legless lizard and on coastal vegetation she did work on the desert tortoise for BLM and CalTrans, and is currently on the board of the Desert Tortoise Council.  She lives in Tucson Arizona, and works as a Docent at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum.

Madhusudan Katti

Madhu is Associate Professor of Vertebrate Biology at California State University, Fresno.  He is an ecologist with a primary research focus on how birds respond to environmental variation in natural and human-dominated landscapes. He grew up and discovered birdwatching near Bombay (now Mumbai), India, earned a Masters degree in Wildlife Biology from the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun (in the Himalayan foothills of northern India), and studied the wintering ecology of migratory warblers in southern India for his Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego. He then held post-doctoral positions at Princeton and Arizona State universities before joining the faculty of the Biology Department at Fresno State in 2004.

Tasha La Doux

Tasha La Doux is Assistant Director of the Sweeney Granite Mountains Desert Research Center. She attended UC San Diego to receive her B.S. in Ecology, Behavior, & Evolution in 1995, then received a Ph.D. in Botany from Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden (Claremont Graduate University) in 2004. She has worked as a botanist in the region since 1998, including federal land management positions such as the Forest Botanist on the Angeles National Forest and as Branch Chief for Vegetation Management at Joshua Tree National Park. Her research interests include plant mating systems, population biology, and floristics; she maintains an active role in public lands management and the conservation of rare plants in the region. She is currently working on a Flora of Joshua Tree National Park. Tasha started working at the Granite Mountains Desert Research Center in 2007. 

Charles Peterson, Biology Department, Hofstra University (bio to come)

Bora Zivkovic

Bora Zivkovic is the editor of Scientific American's blog network, organizer of ScienceOnline conferences and the editor of the Open Laboratory annual anthology of the best science writing on the Web. He writes A Blog around the Clock, a blend of chronobiology, science, politics and education, among other subjects. Born in Serbia, Bora emigrated to the U.S. in 1991. He received an M.S. degree in the department of zoology at North Carolina State University.