The meet our objectives, the OBGP relies on contributions from academics and managers with a broad range of expertise. We have brought together an amazing group of people from diverse backgrounds to bring the future of biodiversity monitoring to Oregon.

Who We Are

Emily Dziedzic is a Graduate Research Assistant with the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Oregon State University. She received her undergraduate degree in Art History from Wellesley College and was the webmaster at Art Technology Group—an eCommerce software development company—before pursuing studies in conservation biology. Her work with the OBGP involves coordinating the efforts of various organizations to build our genomic library, and developing novel molecular tools to facilitate wildlife management and conservation.

Taal Levi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Oregon State University. He was trained in physics and biology at UC Berkeley, and went on to receive a PhD in Environmental Studies from UC Santa Cruz. He has diverse research interests in wildlife ecology, conservation biology, and disease ecology in tropical, temperate and boreal ecosystems. A consistent theme of his research is the implementation of quantitative and molecular methods to applied ecology and conservation issues.

Jamie Anthony has been fascinated with the hidden world below the water’s surface since childhood. He has been with ODFW since 2013, when he started his current position as the monitoring coordinator in ODFW’s Fish Division. In this position, he works to ensure that research, monitoring and evaluation are efficient and coordinated to facilitate the best strategies and actions to conserve native fish populations and support fisheries. Prior to his move to Oregon, he was the water quality program coordinator for the Colorado Division of Parks and Wildlife, where he provided a voice for fish and wildlife in state water quality policy and natural resource damage assessment. He earned both a B.S. and an M.S. from Iowa State University (Go Cyclones!) and a Ph.D. from the University of Colorado at Boulder. His research has included native freshwater mussels and their commercial fisheries as well as freshwater biogeochemistry.

Trevan has worked with ODFW since graduating from Oregon State University in 1995. His work has involved conducting biological research from the canyons of Southeast Oregon to the tidal mudflats of Oregon estuaries, and he has been involved with projects involving steelhead, Oregon chub, redband rainbow and Lahontan cutthroat trouts, and the wide array of fish species living in Oregon’s estuaries. Over the last 15 years or so Trevan has conducted research in the Salmon River estuary that has documented fish use of restored marshes as well as life history behaviors that are dependent on a functional estuarine system. His interests include life history diversity and the habitat that makes it available, native fish distribution, tidal marsh restoration, fish sampling techniques, and new innovations.

I'm a plant geneticist with the US Forest Service PNW Research Station in Corvallis, OR. My main interest is how perennial plants sense and respond to stress, and how stress responses change genomes and contribute to local adaptation. With my training in genomics, I'm also interested in finding new applications for genomic methods that can support landscape and watershed management. Examples include using environmental DNA to identify stream/riparian organisms, and using DNA from wood to identify illegally harvested species and sources.

Bruce is an aquatic ecologist with research interests in salmonid and freshwater mollusk life history and habitat associations, the effects of road-crossing culverts on aquatic organism passage and population connectivity, and aquatic invasive species. He also serves as the Dive Safety Officer for the US Forest Service, Pacific Northwest region.

Dr. Laura Hauck is a Biological Science Technician at the Pacific Northwest Research Station of the U.S. Forest Service where she manages the Molecular Biology Laboratory for the Plant Genomics group of the Land and Watershed Management Program.  She studied gene expression in symbiotic cnidarians at Oregon State University where she received her PhD in Zoology in 2007.  She spent several years in the Biomedical Industry conducting work on synthetic RNA-mediated drug therapies and microbiome research before she landed in the Forest Service.  For the past two years she has been working in Dr. Rich Cronn’s lab in a collaborative effort with Research Fish Biologist Brooke Penaluna to develop a multi-species eDNA array for forest and aquatic resource management use.

Peter Konstantinidis is an ichthyologist and comparative anatomist by training. He is a curator of the vertebrate collection of the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, and specializes in ichthyoplankton taxonomy and identification. During his time at the Natural History Museum in London, he developed a strong interest in the early life history of larval fishes. He enjoys the painstaking attention to detail involved in this type of work and is particularly interested in how identifying characteristics often differ between larval and adult fishes of the same species. Besides the beauty and the vast diversity of larval fishes, they also play a crucial role in comparative morphology, phylogenetic systematics, conservation and community structures in ecosystems. His interest and expertise in the identification of larval fishes led to invitations to several larval fish and taxonomic workshops. At the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester Point, VA, Peter was part of survey teams to monitor American sturgeon, Shad, and juvenile Shad.

Brooke Penaluna is a Research Fish Biologist at the Pacific Northwest Research, US Forest Service. She received her PhD in Fisheries Science from Oregon State University. Her research focuses on understanding the effects of climate change, contemporary forest harvest and disturbances on fish and riparian-aquatic habitats. She has expanded her research into the world of eDNA where, with collaborators, she is trying to understand aquatic biodiversity from across multiple taxa from a water bottle. Find out more about Brooke.

As an ichthyologist and curator of the Oregon State Ichthyology Collection, Brian Sidlauskas works to help reveal and protect the world’s tremendous biodiversity of fishes. His research seeks to understand the evolution, ecology and diversity of freshwater fishes on scales ranging from local to global. Recent projects have involved the phylogenetics and evolutionary diversification of two hundred species of headstanding fishes in South America, the discovery and description of cryptic species of fishes in desert Oregon and off the Oregon coast, biodiversity surveys in Guyana and Gabon, and the somewhat perplexing discovery that a fossil described more than 100 years ago as a lemur without a nose, is actually a fish.  He achieved a measure of internet fame for his use of Facebook to community source fish identifications from photographs. Brian teaches courses in Ichthyology, Systematics of Fishes, and Conservation Genetics, advises several graduate students, and has involved two dozen undergraduates in the renovation, research and management of the quarter-million preserved fishes in the Oregon State Ichthyology Collection.