2016 AAAS Annual Meeting (February 11-15, 2016)

February 10 - 15, 2016

Samuel Wasser: Forensic Science, Organized Crime, and the Illegal Ivory Trade: The Elephant in the Room

Endowed Chair and Director, Center for Conservation Biology, University of Washington Dr. Samuel Wasser is a conservation biologist aiming to use the best possible science to inform wildlife conservation and management policies around the world. His work includes development and application of noninvasive tools to maximize access to stress, reproductive, and nutrition hormones, toxins, and DNA from feces, often relying on detection dogs to simultaneously locate samples from multiple species over large land- and seascapes. His work informs wildlife policies by assessing impacts of environmental disturbances on wildlife health, abundance, and distributions, as well as determining origins of poaching hotspots around the world. He completed a bachelor’s degree in zoology at Michigan State University, a master’s degree in zoology at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and Ph.D. in animal behavior at the University of Washington. He was awarded the first H.F. Guggenheim Career Development Award for his studies of reproductive impacts of aggression in female mammals, and received the first Research Scientist Development Award from the Smithsonian Institution for his work on noninvasive hormone methods. He is a research professor in the Department of Biology at University of Washington, where he holds the endowed chair in conservation biology and serves as the director of the university’s Center for Conservation Biology.