Gareth Russell: Curriculum Vitae

CONTACT DETAILS

Employment Address Department of Biological Sciences
New Jersey Institute of Technology
323 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd
Newark, NJ 07102-1982
USA
E-mail russell@njit.edu
Internet http://web.njit.edu/~russell

Physical and Mailing Address Department of Biology
Rutgers University
195 University Ave.
Newark, NJ 07102
USA
Phone ++1 973 353 1429
Fax ++1 973 353 5518
E-mail as above
Internet as above

PERSONAL DETAILS

Date and place of birth 31st. July, 1970, Redhill, Surrey, UK
Citizenship British
Current Residence New Jersey, USA
Work Permission Green Card
Marital Status Married, to Kimberly

ACADEMIC HISTORY

1992 BA (Honours, upper second class) in Zoology, New College, University of Oxford
1996 PhD in Zoology, University of Tennessee. Advisor Stuart L. Pimm
1996–1998 Postdoctoral Research Associate at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, Santa Barbara, California, USA (NCEAS)
1996–1998 Visiting Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Centre for Population Biology, Silwood Park, UK (CPB)
1998–2002 Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee.
1998–2000 Visiting Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Center for Environmental Research and Conservation at Columbia University.
2001–2002 Research Associate in the Department of Biology at the College of Wooster.
2002–2005 Lecturer in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology (E3B) at Columbia University.
2003–2005 Director of Undergraduate Studies and Post-Baccalaurate Programs for E3B, ColumbiaUniversity.
2005 to 2007 Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT).
2007 to present Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT).
2005 to present Member of the Federated Department of Biology of NJIT and Rutgers University.

AWARDS

Oxford

  • External examiners’ special prize for undergraduate project.
  • Christopher Welch Scholarship for Graduate Studies in Zoology (declined in favour of a position at the University of Tennessee).

Tennessee

  • Charles Elton award from the Journal of Animal Ecology for best paper by a young author (1995).
  • Contract from the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (UK) to the University of Tennessee (with Stuart L. Pimm as principal investigator), for research into the dynamics of small populations and communities with emphasis on prediction of times to extinction. £7000 ($10 500).
  • Chancellor’s Citation for Extraordinary Professional Promise (1996).
  • Science Alliance awards for excellence in research ($1000 in 1994, $3000 in 1996).
  • Science Alliance permanent stipend upgrade.
  • Numerous graduate teaching assistantships.

NCEAS/CPB

  • Postdoctoral research position, from a proposal submitted initially to NCEAS, then to CPB. Research involves the synthesis of population-level and community-level models of species appearance and disappearance, and development of improved methods for estimating times to extinction. Two years of postdoctoral salary plus travel allowance.

RESEARCH FUNDING

As Student or Post-doc

  • 1993: $10,500 from the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (UK) for research into the dynamics of small populations and communities with emphasis on prediction of times to extinction. With Stuart Pimm.
  • 1996: $75,000 from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis for the Working Group Sampling Curves in Ecology: Theory and Application. With Michael McKinney.
  • 1998: $50,000 from the National Park Service for project Analysis of the spatiotemporal dynamics of wading birds in Everglades National Park, using survey data from the last 10–15 years. With Stuart Pimm.
  • 1999: $100,000 from the National Park Service for project Analysis of current and historical breeding data on wading birds in South Florida. With Stuart Pimm.

As PI or Co-PI

  • 2006: $10,000 from the Meadlowlands Environmental Research Center for project Understanding Colonial Wading Bird Metapopulation Dynamics in the NJ Meadowlands and NY Harbor (Phase 1). PI.
  • 2007: $100,000 from the US Fish and Wildlife Service for project A spatially-explicit population model of the endangered Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow in Everglades National Park. Co-PI.
  • 2007: $643,692 from the National Science Foundation for project An automated real-time identification and monitoring system for reef fish. PI.
  • 2007: $9,900 from the Meadlowlands Environmental Research Center for project An urban refuge for pollinators? A comparative study of bee communities in the NJ Meadlowlands. PI.
  • 2009: $239,824 from the National Science Foundation for project Group Undergraduate Biology and Mathematics Training Program at NJIT. Co-PI.
  • 2009: $299,167 from the National Science Foundation for project Understanding the Dynamic Connections Among Stewardship, Land Cover, and Ecosystem Services in New York City’s Urban Forest. Co-PI.

OTHER RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

Fieldwork

  • Pitfall trapping, sweep-netting and hand collecting of spiders in Nantahala National Forest, North Carolina, USA.
  • Mist-netting, banding and behavioural observations of endemic and introduced birds in upland cloud forest, Maui, Hawai'i, USA.
  • Mist-netting, banding and behavioural observations of the Cape Sable Seaside Sparrow (Ammodramus maritima mirabilis) in Everglades National Park, Florida, USA.
  • Wading bird colony counts, New York Harbor.
  • Bee survey of New Jersey Meadowlands.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Undergraduate laboratory coordination

  • General biology
  • Comparative vertebrate biology

Undergraduate lecture courses

  • General Ecology
  • Ecology and Evolution (as part of Environmental Biology sequence)
  • Human Ecology
  • Population Biology
  • Ecology and Evolution of Disease

Graduate courses

  • Ecology (lecture)
  • Conservation Biology (lecture/discussion)
  • Selectivity in Invasions and Extinctions (small-group seminar)
  • Computational Ecology (lecture/computer lab)
  • Statistical Methods for Research in the Life Sciences (lecture/discussion)

SERVICE

Professional Societies

  • American Society of Naturalists
  • Ecological Society of America
  • Society for Conservation Biology

Reviewing

  • For Science, Ecology/Ecological Monographs, American Naturalist, Journal of Animal Ecology, Conservation Biology, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B, Animal Conservation, Chapman & Hall.

MEETINGS ORGANIZED

  • NCEAS working group Sampling Curves in Ecology: Theory and Applications. With Michael McKinney of the University of Tennessee.

SELECTED INVITED PRESENTATIONS

  • The propagation of disturbances though ecological systems. Presented at the Network Contagion and Failure workshop, Columbia University, New York, USA, May 2002.
  • April 1997: RUSSELL, G. J., Oikos symposium “Population Dynamics in Stochastic Environments”, Røros, Norway. The influence of environmental variation on community composition.
  • May 2002: RUSSELL, G. J., Network Contagion and Failure Workshop, Columbia University. The propagation of disturbances though ecological systems.
  • January 2004: RUSSELL, G. J., First Okasaki Biology Conference, “The Biology of Extinction”, Okasaki, Japan. Community canalization: one reason why ecological communities are not critical.
  • October 2005: RUSSELL, G. J., Applied Mathematics Colloquium, NJIT. Vanishing birds, invading beetles and other space-time puzzles.
  • December 2005: RUSSELL, G. J., Departmental Seminar, Department of Ecology, Environment and Natural Resources, Rutgers University. Vanishing birds, invading beetles and other space-time puzzles.
  • May 2007: RUSSELL, G. J., & A. ROSALES. Meadowlands Symposium II, Meadowlands Environmental Research Institute. Sociability leads to instability: A metapopulation model of the heron and egret nesting colonies in NY Harbor.
  • May 2007: RUSSELL, G. J., & A. ROSALES. 50th Annual Conference, International Association for Great Lakes Research. Sociability leads to instability: A metapopulation model of the (potential) heron and egret nesting colonies in New York Harbor and the Meadowlands.
  • May 2007: RUSSELL, G. J.. Minisymposium on Mathematical Biology, annual conference on Frontiers in Applied and Computational Mathematics, NJIT. Ecological communities: how does Nature construct them?
  • July 2007: RUSSELL, G. J., & S. L. PIMM. Food Webs symposium, annual meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology, Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Food webs: how does nature construct them, and can we construct new ones?

PUBLICATIONS

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PUBLICATIONS SUBMITTED OR IN PREPARATION (preprints available)

ARTICLES IN POPULAR PRESS

  • Pimm et al. 1993 was the subject of an article in the New York Times on December 14th., 1993.
  • Pimm et al. 1995 was the subject of an article in the New York Times on July 25th., 1995.

WEB SITES

  • www.eco-tools.net — This site provides online, state-of-the-art analysis tools for ecology and conservation biology. The goal of the site is to make recent developments in mathematical ecology available as soon as possible to the world-wide community of conservation practitioners, eliminating the obstacles presented by language differences, difficulties in obtaining journals, computer hardware and software, etc. The site is an open source effort, and contributions have been made by many, especially in the area of translation. To date, it has been used by people from over 50 counties, including Guatemala, India, and Iran.