Harvard Faculty Leaders

Prof. Peter and Mrs. Mary Ashton

Both actively involved in planning the HMNH’s Institute to Institute programs, Peter and Mary Ashton have led trips to Borneo, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and Scotland. Peter received his undergraduate and research degrees from Cambridge University. A systematist and floristic ecologist, he started his career as a forest botanist in an independent vacation expedition to the Amazon. On graduation, he became Forest Botanist in H.H. the Sultan of Brunei’s government, serving five years; followed by five years in the forest service of Sarawak, East Malaysia. Since becoming an academic, first in Aberdeen University for eleven years and now for twenty-one years at Harvard, he has continued with his students to research the forests of the Asian tropics. Ashton has been Director of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard, where he is currently Charles Bullard Research Professor of Forestry. He is a Faculty Fellow at Harvard’s Center for International Development. He has been President of the International Association of Botanical Gardens and a governor of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Mary has worked as a volunteer for the Arnold Arboretum, the Boston Library Schools, and the New England Aquarium.

Dr. Janet Browne

Janet Browne, Aramont Professor of the History of Science in Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is one of the world's leading scholars on the life, times, and impact of Charles Darwin, a compelling historical figure who exerts a continuing powerful influence on our society.
Janet’s interests range widely over the history of the life sciences and natural history. After a degree in zoology from Trinity College, Dublin she turned to history of science. Her first book, "The Secular Ark", traces the history of naturalists interested in the question of how species are distributed around the world. She has also written on the history of museums, specimen collecting, and botanic gardens. Since then she has specialized in reassessing Charles Darwin’s work, first as associate editor of the early volumes of The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, and more recently as author of a major biographical study that integrates Darwin’s science with his life and times. Widely read by a general audience, Browne's Darwin biographies have been described by various reviewers as "magisterial," "monumental," "dazzling," "definitive," "brilliant," and a "masterpiece." Her work has won several notable literary and scholarly prizes.

Dr. Charles and Mrs. Mary Sue Burnham

A veteran HMNH leader, Dr. Charles Burnham, Professor of
Mineralogy, Emeritus, at Harvard University, has served in Harvard's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences for 30 years, where he taught mineralogy, crystallography, and environmental geology, and lectured on glaciers and ice ages. He served occasionally as visiting scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of Cambridge, and at ETH in Switzerland. Since retiring from Harvard in 1996, he has been Adjunct Professor of Geology at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. He has lectured previously on Harvard travel programs to the Canadian Rockies, Patagonia and Tierra Del Fuego, Alaska and the Yukon, Antarctica, Hudson Bay, Labrador and Newfoundland, and the Canadian Arctic islands. He is interested in global plate tectonics and volcanology, especially the origins of magmas and the hazards of eruptions. In addition to extensive knowledge of high-latitude ecosystems, he is interested in global warming issues, especially as they relate to Earth's cryosphere and its impacts on future sea level.

Prof. Owen Gingerich

Owen Gingerich is Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and of the History of Science at Harvard University and a senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. In 1992-93 he chaired Harvard's History of Science Department. Professor Gingerich's research interests have ranged from the recomputation of an ancient Babylonian mathematical table to the interpretation of stellar spectra. He is co-author of two successive standard models for the solar atmosphere, the first to take into account rocket and satellite observations of the sun. Professor Gingerich has been vice president of the American Philosophical Society (America's oldest scientific academy) and he has served as chairman of the US National Committee of the International Astronomical Union. He has been a councilor of the American Astronomical Society, and he helped organize its Historical Astronomy Division. In 2000 he won the Division’s Doggett Prize for his contributions to the history of astronomy. The AAS awarded him their Education Prize for 2004. A world traveler, he has successfully observed twelve total solar eclipses

Prof. Farish and Mrs. Eleanor Jenkins

Farish is Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard and Professor of Anatomy at the Harvard Medical School. In addition to organizing and leading vertebrate paleontological expeditions to Greenland, the American West, North and East Africa and other parts of the world, Farish pioneered the use of high-speed x-ray cinematography for studies of animal locomotion, including bird flight. He normally travels with his wife, Eleanor, an avid plant enthusiast, and together they have led trips for the HMNH all over the world.

Prof. James J. and Mrs. Sue McCarthy

Jim is Harvard's Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography, and former director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. He teaches courses in ocean and climate science and oversees Harvard's program in Environmental Science and Public Policy. His research interests relate to marine plankton, biogeochemical cycles and climate. He received his undergraduate degree from Gonzaga University and his doctorate from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He has served on and led many national and international groups charged with planning and implementing studies of global change. In 2001 he headed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Working Group II, which had responsibilities for assessing impacts of current and future global climate change. He was also a lead author on the recently completed Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. He is a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He and his wife, Sue, have led many HMNH trips to polar regions.

Dr. Mark and Mrs. Louisa Van Baalen

Mark Van Baalen, Ph.D., is a geologist and Associate in Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard. He also serves on the Board of Freshman Advisers. Mark teaches both traditional geology and environmental geology. His particular interests include the metamorphic rocks of ancient mountain belts, the development of landscapes through glaciation, and the mitigation of volcanic hazards. Mark is often accompanied by his wife Louisa, who is Director of Doctoral Programs at the Kennedy School of Government. Mark and Louisa have traveled in Alaska and other parts of the Arctic, and are experienced pilots and sailors.

Mark and Louisa have viewed numerous solar eclipses over the past 35 years, using their knowledge of astronomy, climate, and mountain weather to successfully select viewing sites. The viewing site for the 2006 eclipse in Turkey was chosen after careful consideration of these factors.

Prof. Robert Woollacott

Bob Woollacott is a professor of biology in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and a curator of marine invertebrates in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. Bob joined the faculty in 1972 and over the years has taught courses in marine and reproductive biology at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Presently, his research and teaching focus on issues such as human impacts and biological invasions in the marine environment. Bob also has a deep involvement with Japan, in its science as well as its culture and art. He has served on the editorial boards of two Japanese journals and lectured often at Japanese universities and marine laboratories. As an amateur scholar and collector, Bob has interests focused especially on woodblock prints and illustrated books from the Edo to early Showa periods. Bob is a frequent lecturer and host on Harvard educational travel programs.

Warren M. Zapol, M.D.

Warren M. Zapol, M.D. is Reginald Jenney Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and Anesthetist-in-Chief at Massachusetts General Hospital. He has contributed to the understanding of acute respiratory distress syndrome, pulmonary circulation and its control of vascular resistance during inflammatory lung disease, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (artificial lungs), and, most recently, the use of inhaled nitric oxide for treating pulmonary hypertension in newborns and adults. His research has been on the diving reflex, studying the champion divers of the animal kingdom, the Weddell seals of Antarctica. As a result he has traveled to Antarctica countless times, and has lectured on four trips for the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Warren was recently elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences.

HMNH Trip and Study Leaders

Alfie and Sally Alcorn

Alfie and Sally Alcorn both are veteran world travelers, having developed and led trips for the HMNH Travel Program to all corners of the earth. Together they have experience escorting trips to Africa, Alaska, Argentina & Chile, China, Costa Rica, Crete, India, Indonesia, Israel & Jordan, Mongolia, Rapa Nui, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Alfie was born in England, moved to the United States as a child, and graduated from Harvard. An avid birder and wildflower enthusiast, he has repeatedly visited the British Isles. Before retiring in 1998, his Harvard work experience included serving as editor of the Harvard Gazette, instructing at the Extension School, and running the Travel Program for the HMNH. Alfie is also a published novelist. Alfie is usually joined by his wife Sally, a journalist, publisher, and business executive who is also an intrepid traveler in her own right.

Drs. Leeanne and Alfonso Alonso

Leanne is an all-around field naturalist who studied the ecology of ant-plant interactions with Harvard’s E.O. Wilson. Leeanne’s research focus is on tropical ecology and ants. She has studied the diversity, ecology, and behavior of ants in Central and South America, Asia, and Africa. Her doctoral research concentrated on the interactions between ants and plants throughout the Neotropics. Leeanne is currently a vice president at Conservation International and heads up their Rapid Assessment Program (RAP), through which she leads teams of expert scientists to remote areas of the world to document species of animals and plants. Widely traveled, Leeane has led HMNH trips to Mexio, Costa Rica & Panama, the Galapagos Islands, Hawaii, New Zealand, and the Peruvian Amazon.

Alfonso is a conservation biologist who designs, implements, and manages the research and conservation programs, both domestically and internationally, at the Smithsonian Institution/Monitoring and Assessment of Biodiversity Program. The Program is dedicated to the conservation of biological diversity and the sustainable use of natural resources. Alfonso has traveled extensively throughout North, Central and South America, Africa and Asia, speaks fluent Spanish, and is a popular HMNH leader.

With an undergraduate degree in zoology from Oxford and a PhD in evolutionary genetics from Princeton, Andrew's expertise is on how Darwinian processes affect natural populations. His research has taken him into the bowels of molecular biology labs (in pursuit of that most charismatic of species, the fruit fly) and to more far-flung locales, such as Nepal (bats), Borneo (butterflies), the Ecuadorean Andes (more butterflies), and the Faroe Islands (wrens). In the highlands of New Guinea, he has done research on the ecology and behavior on some of the region's more engaging species: giant rats and spiny bandicoots. Currently a research associate at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, he teaches both at Harvard and overseas (including recent courses on molecular biology in Antananarivo, Madagascar; on evolution in Istanbul, Turkey; and on the history of science in Oxford) and writes extensively for both scientific and popular audiences. His book on Alfred Russel Wallace, Infinite Tropics (2002), surveys the remarkable achievements of the unjustly neglected co-discoverer of natural selection. DNA (2003, co-authored with James D Watson) was published to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the DNA double helix and tells the story of the ongoing scientific, technological, and social revolution precipitated by the breakthrough.

Lauren Bruck is the Head of Travel at the HMNH. Well acquainted with the South Pacific, Lauren spent over two years working as an adventure travel guide in Papua New Guinea where she escorted travelers through villages, mountains, rivers and islands. She became the first non-native woman to trek into the Auwin initiation caves and among the first to join the men of New Ireland on their shark calling expedition. She also assisted with a month-long exploratory expedition by canoe through the nearby Solomon Islands.

Lauren has also led tours through Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, French Polynesia and South East Asia. Lauren is an adventurer who has visited over 50 countries, spending a significant amount of time in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia, and she has also lived in Israel and Germany. She currently serves on the Council of the Harvard Travellers Club, where she has also lectured.

Divya was educated at Rajkumar College, Rajkot, and Fergusson College, Pune. He obtained his Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Pune, standing first in the University. While at college and university he worked with the late Professor D.D. Kosambi, assisting him in the field studies of prehistoric sites and tribal cultures. He received an M.Sc. (Econ) from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, for his research in History.

After a distinguished career spanning 33 years in the Tata Administrative Service, he retired as Chief Operating Officer, Leisure Hotels Division, The Taj Group of Hotels. Throughout, he has taken an active interest in nature conservation. For several years he was on the Executive Committee and Vice President of the Bombay Natural History Society. He is a member of the Cat Specialist Group, Species Survival Commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and a Trustee of the World Wide Fund for Nature – India.

His book TheEnd of a Trail: the Cheetah in India (1995) was a groundbreaking history of a species, based on research for which the University of Pune awarded him the rare D.Litt. degree. His latest work, The Story of Asia’s Lions (2005) evaluates efforts made for the conservation of the species that once roamed the Asian continent from Palestine to Palamau, and is now relegated to a relict population in the Gir Forest in Gujarat and its surrounding areas. He has several popular and academic articles to his credit and continues to research the history of conservation. He has been leading trips for the Harvard Museum of natural History since 2001.

Dr. Sharon Collinge

Sharon Collinge is a landscape ecologist and conservation biologist whose research focuses on understanding the ecological consequences of human-induced changes to natural systems. Her work centers on the impacts of habitat loss, fragmentation, and restoration on the persistence of native species. She is particularly interested in the interface between environmental science and policy regarding endangered species and habitat protection.

Sharon earned a doctorate in landscape ecology from Harvard University in 1995 where she was also a Teaching Fellow in the Departments of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and the Graduate School of Design. In 1998 she became an assistant professor of biology and environmental studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Sharon was named a 2004 Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow in recognition of her outstanding leadership ability and desire to communicate scientific issues beyond academic audiences. She also served as a delegate and faculty resource person for the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS). In addition to her field research in Colorado, California, and Costa Rica, Sharon is currently pursuing new research on how human activities affect rodents and disease ecology in central Tanzania.

Barbara Isaac

An archaeologist by training, Barbara Isaac recently retired from her position of ten years as the Assistant Director of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. During the same decade, she was also head of the Repatriation Office, implementing the mandated return of Native American objects under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act legislation. Prior to that, Barbara had worked for twenty-five years with her late husband, Prof. Glynn Isaac, in East Africa, specifically within the Great Rift Valley of Kenya and Tanzania, and researching the behavioral evolution of the hominids who were our ancestors. Barbara is also an experienced world traveler, and a veteran HMNH study leader.

Bryan Jennings

Bryan Jennings is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University. A lifelong naturalist, he was educated at the University of California at Santa Barbara (B.A. Zoology) and later at the University of Texas at Austin (Ph.D. Biology) for his work on the evolution and biogeography of Australian fauna and flora with an emphasis on lizards using a combination of molecular genetic (DNA) techniques, museum specimens, and fieldwork. After graduate school, Bryan continued his Australian research with a focus on birds as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington before moving to Harvard in 2004. In Fall 2006, Bryan will start an appointment as an Assistant Professor of Biology at Humboldt State University in northern California.

Dino J. Martins

Dino is an East African artist, naturalist, and writer who is currently conducting research in evolution and ecology at Harvard as a PhD student. A keen all-round naturalist, Dino has studied a wide range of species in East Africa including baboons, butterflies, ants, acacia trees, and wildflowers. Dino is a regular feature writer for Swara Wildlife magazine, Nature Kenya, and others and he illustrates his articles with watercolors of insects and other creatures. He has also written guidebooks for the Kenya Wildlife Service for six of the country's most popular national parks. Dino has traveled widely in East Africa and has led expeditions for the Kenya Museum Society and the East Africa Natural History Society.

Dr. Andrew M. Shedlock

Andrew Shedlock is a Senior Research Associate at Harvard with joint appointments in The Museum of Comparative Zoology, The Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and the Bauer Center for Genome Research.  He also serves as Core Teaching Faculty for Cornell University's Shoals Marine Laboratory.  Andrew holds several degrees from Cornell and the University of Washington, and has been awarded research fellowships at the University of California at Berkeley, and at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Japan's National Institute of Statistical Mathematics.  Andrew's life-long fascination with biological and cultural diversity and his enthusiasm for world travel have shaped his international research program which employs advances in genomics and biotechnology to reconstruct the evolutionary history of vertebrates and to protect endangered species in the wild.  Andrew has studied the ecology and evolution of a wide variety of animals, including plankton, insects, fishes, whales, elephants, and most recently, birds and reptiles (including dinosaurs), and this eclectic research program has allowed him to explore wilderness regions and cultural centers across the globe.  An avid cyclist, backpacker, alpinist, kayaker, sailor, and diver, Andrew strongly advocates travel as a vital educational experience and is particularly fond of sharing regional customs, cuisine, and conversation with local residents, fellow colleagues and students.

Piotr is a research associate with the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University and an entomologist and conservation biologist with Conservation International. He received his Ph.D. in Entomology from the University of Connecticut in 2000. His publications, both technical and popular, strive to promote appreciation and conservation of invertebrate animals. Piotr's field research, which deals mostly with behavior and biology of singing insects, has taken him to six continents, often in areas rarely, if ever, visited by other biologists. As a nature photographer Piotr focuses on smaller and generally misunderstood organisms, such as invertebrates, amphibians, and reptiles. His recent book The Smaller Majority illustrates a multitude of threats faced by invertebrate animals and tries to show rare or never before photographed organisms.

Emily Standen

Em Standen was born and raised in Canada and has always been an outdoor enthusiast and lover of natural history. A fascination with fish led her to a first degree in Marine Biology and Oceanography from Dalhousie University. Her desire to understand fish continued and Em moved to the west coast of Canada to spend several years working in fisheries research and development. There she found contracts that took her to the most remote and untouched areas of Western Canada to survey rivers, creeks, and streams. The epic life history of Pacific salmon then sparked her interest and she began her MSc work at the University of British Columbia. Her research used radiotelemetry and underwater videography to track pink and sockeye salmon as they migrated hundreds of kilometers upriver to their spawning grounds. To understand how these fish use river currents to help them swim she has come to Harvard to complete a PhD on the biomechanics of fish swimming.

Em has also spent several years as a wilderness guide leading long trips throughout Northern and Western Canada. Her own adventurous spirit has also taken her on long journeys throughout Central America where she has kayaked, biked, hiked and camped her way through magnificent ecosystems encountering a wide range of wildlife.

Robert B. Stephenson

Rob Stephenson received a city planning degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1965 and worked in mostly institutional planning for many years in New York and Boston. However, his passion is for the Antarctic, an interest first kindled while an undergraduate at Dartmouth. Stephenson has one of the largest private Antarctic collections in the world, including books, art, photographs, stamps, medals, artifacts. Stephenson made his first voyage to Antarctica in 1991 to the Ross Sea area, and since then has visited the Peninsula five times. He has written or edited a number of Antarctic titles including book reviews and obscure accounts of voyages and expeditions, and is the coordinator of The Antarctic Circle, an “informal international group of scholars and knowledgeable amateurs interested or involved in non-scientific Antarctic studies.” Rob has also traveled widely in Africa and the Middle East and was a Fulbright scholar for a year in Australia. He has served as president of the Harvard Travellers Club and lives in Jaffrey, New Hampshire, surrounded by Antarcticana.

Wenfei Tong

Melissa Emery Thompson

is a biological anthropologist who has conducted extensive field research on the behavior and physiology of primates. She has been particularly interested in investigating the reproductive strategies of female primates, as well as in exploring the influence of ecology on behavioral diversity within ape species. In this context, she has spent the past 10 years conducting research on primate behavioral ecology and is currently involved in studies of reproductive biology, stress, health, and social behavior of wild chimpanzees in Uganda and Tanzania, orangutans in Sumatra and Borneo, and indigenous human populations in Bolivia. She has also conducted behavioral research on a number of other primate species and on baleen whales off the coast of New England.

Gaby and George Whitehouse

Gaby and George Whitehouse have been traveling together for over 30 years both as part of Gaby's duties as Director of Public Programs at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology (now Harvard Museum of Natural History) and on their own.  Gaby started the Natural History Travel Program at the museum in 1975 and continued to organize and run it until she left Harvard in 1995.  They have accompanied travel programs to most of the world's wild places and are particularly fond of the African continent. Since Gaby left Harvard they have been running their own travel company, both arranging trips for independent travelers and escorting small groups to their favorite destinations.

Dr. Amity Wilczek

Amity Wilczek recently received her Ph.D. in evolutionary ecology at
Harvard University, and she continues her research as a postdoctoral
fellow at Brown University. Her current projects seek to elucidate how plants with broad geographic distributions tolerate and adapt to diverse climates. She is addressing these questions using a combination of fieldwork and genetic analysis, with the goal of understanding how plants adapt to global climate change (both past and present) as well as how crop plants can be more successfully grown in different locations. Amity loves to travel, and she is enjoying the opportunity to indulge this fascination as she works among her five research field sites in Europe spanning from northern Finland to Valencia, Spain. Amity also has a long-standing interest in the biology of islands, particularly the unique flora and fauna that evolve in extreme isolation. Amity has taught courses in ecology, evolution, plant biology, and economic botany and received multiple teaching awards from the Bok Center at Harvard University. She has led trips for the HMNH to Cuba, Australia, Costa Rica, Panama and New Zealand.