University of Utah
Salt Lake City, UT, United States
Professor Çağan Şekercioğlu directs the Biodiversity and Conservation Ecology Lab at the University of Utah and the environmental NGO KuzeyDoğa in northeastern Turkey, which he founded in 2010 and 2007, respectively. He studies the conservation ecology of keystone vertebrates and their ecological functions in the Anthropocene, the current era dominated by global change. His research and conservation work has three interlinked foci: studying long-term ecological change in animal populations living in ecosystems threatened by habitat loss, climate change and other impacts; understanding how avian ecological attributes affect the likelihood and consequences of bird extinctions; and integrating community-based conservation, education, and capacity-building. After graduating from Robert College of Istanbul, he studied Biology and Anthropology at Harvard University and received his Ph.D. in ecology and evolution from Stanford University Department of Biology. Şekercioğlu served as a senior scientist at Stanford University until 2010 when he joined the University of Utah biology faculty. He is also a visiting professor at Koç University Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics in İstanbul and an associate of ornithology at the Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology. For his community-based conservation work in getting eastern Turkey’s first Ramsar wetland declared, helping create Turkey’s first wildlife corridor and the country’s first bird-nesting island, he became the only double recipient (2008 and 2013) of UK’s top grassroots conservation prize, the Whitley Gold Award given by Princess Anne. He was chosen a National Geographic Explorer in 2011 and a National Geographic Risk Taker in 2013. In 2014, he received the University of Utah inaugural citizen science award and became the youngest person to receive the TUBITAK Special Award, Turkey’s top science award given by the President. He was chosen an Ashoka Environment Fellow and Sabanci Foundation Changemaker in 2015. During his ornithological field work, he has seen over 8300 bird species in the wild on all continents. His research has been featured in 46 documentaries, including Turkey’s first BBC, National Geographic and Al Jazeera wildlife documentaries, and his professional photography is represented by the National Geographic Image Collection. Şekercioğlu’s three books and over 150 scientific publications received over 13,000 citations and an h-index of 51. He is the most cited scientist in Turkey in biology, ecology and ornithology. Since 2010, he has been one the most cited 1% of the environmental scientists of the past decade according to the Essential Science Indicators.
Thursday, August 18, 2022
2:45 PM – 3:00 PM EDT