Meet the Board
Stephanie Galla
President
Stephanie is an assistant professor at Boise State University. She is interested in interdisciplinary conservation efforts for species in decline, and in particular, how genomic technologies can inform management decisions. She earned her PhD at the University of Canterbury (Aotearoa/New Zealand) where she worked with conservation managers to incorporate genomics into pairing decisions for critically endangered birds. At her current position, Stephanie and her team explore whether birds (including grouse and raptors) have the adaptive capacity to be resilient in a changing world.
Meixi Lin
Vice President
Meixi is a Postdoctoral Fellow based at UC Berkeley. Her research interests span conservation genomics and molecular ecology. With experiences in environmental DNA and conservation genomics, her project focuses on developing integrative frameworks to understand the genetic dimension of biodiversity distribution and its responses to environmental changes. Her current work involves building eco-evolutionary models from multi-species whole genome datasets.
Laura Bertola
Treasurer
Laura is affiliated with the National Centre for Biological Sciences as an Associate Researcher. She works on a range of projects, mostly on carnivores and African mammals, but also on other species. Apart from general population genomics, current topics also tackle informing translocations and reintroductions, monitoring populations, developing tools for forensics, and assessing diets. Genetic data can contribute to defining management strategies, both for in situ conservation and for breeding programs. Laura also works with the zoo community to assess how captive populations can contribute to conservation best. To have a meaningful impact in this field, it is crucial to work closely with local partners. In many places capacity to employ genetic techniques is still limited. Building such capacity and making genetic tools as accessible as possible therefore is of major interest. In addition, Laura is actively involved in various conservation organizations, such as the IUCN Cat Specialist Group, the IUCN Conservation Genetics Specialist Group, the GEOBON Genetic Composition Working Group (Steering Committee), the African Lion Working Group (Special Matters Committee), the Himalaya Tiger Foundation (Board member) and the Leo Foundation (Chair).