Ana Luz Porzecanski | |
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Education | Universidad de la República (BSc), Columbia University (Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) |
Occupation(s) | Director of the Center for Biodiversity & Conservation, American Museum of Natural History |
Ana Luz Porzecanski is a conservation biologist who serves as the Director of the Center for Biodiversity & Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History. Her work focuses on understanding biodiversity and fostering effective capacity development for conservation.
Porzecanski was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, and grew up in Uruguay and Brazil in a family of European immigrants. Her father was an agronomist and her mother an architect. [1]
She earned a biology degree from the Universidad de la República in Uruguay and pursued graduate degrees in Environmental Policy. In 2003, she earned her Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Columbia University in New York, where she resides with her family. [2] [1]
Her career began with research assistant positions at the American Museum of Natural History and Columbia University. Porzecanski has over 20 years of experience and leads a multidisciplinary staff in conservation research and capacity development initiatives globally. [3]
Porzecanski is involved in education and science communication, teaching courses on conservation biology, evolution, and global sustainability. She co-curated ¡Cuba!, [4] [5] a binational, bilingual traveling museum exhibition on Cuba's nature and culture, which was the largest exhibition of its kind ever presented in the United States. [6]
Thomas Eugene Lovejoy III was an American ecologist who was President of the Amazon Biodiversity Center, a Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation and a university professor in the Environmental Science and Policy department at George Mason University. Lovejoy was the World Bank's chief biodiversity advisor and the lead specialist for environment for Latin America and the Caribbean as well as senior advisor to the president of the United Nations Foundation. In 2008, he also was the first Biodiversity Chair of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment to 2013. Previously he served as president of the Heinz Center since May 2002. Lovejoy introduced the term biological diversity to the scientific community in 1980. He was a past chair of the Scientific Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) for the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the multibillion-dollar funding mechanism for developing countries in support of their obligations under international environmental conventions.
The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Located in Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 21 interconnected buildings housing 45 permanent exhibition halls, in addition to a planetarium and a library. The museum collections contain about 32 million specimens of plants, animals, fungi, fossils, minerals, rocks, meteorites, human remains, and human cultural artifacts, as well as specialized collections for frozen tissue and genomic and astrophysical data, of which only a small fraction can be displayed at any given time. The museum occupies more than 2,500,000 sq ft (232,258 m2). AMNH has a full-time scientific staff of 225, sponsors over 120 special field expeditions each year, and averages about five million visits annually.
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a design museum at the Andrew Carnegie Mansion in Manhattan, New York City, along the Upper East Side's Museum Mile. It is one of 19 Smithsonian Institution museums and one of three Smithsonian facilities located in New York City, along with the National Museum of the American Indian's George Gustav Heye Center in Bowling Green and the Archives of American Art New York Research Center in the Flatiron District. Unlike other Smithsonian museums, Cooper Hewitt charges an admissions fee. It is the only museum in the United States devoted to historical and contemporary design. Its collections and exhibitions explore design aesthetic and creativity from throughout the United States' history.
Ana Mendieta was a Cuban-American performance artist, sculptor, painter, and video artist who is best known for her "earth-body" artwork. She is considered one of the most influential Cuban-American artists of the post–World War II era. Born in Havana, Cuba, Mendieta left for the United States in 1961.
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is a global 501(c)(3) non-governmental organization, headquartered at the Bronx Zoo in New York City, with a mission to save "wildlife and wild places across the globe". Founded in 1895 as the New York Zoölogical Society (NYZS), the global conservation organization is, as of April 2, 2024, led by Interim President and CEO Robb Menzi. WCS manages four New York City wildlife parks in addition to the Bronx Zoo: the Central Park Zoo, New York Aquarium, Prospect Park Zoo, and Queens Zoo. Together, these parks receive 4 million visitors per year. All these facilities are accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA). WCS has a global program doing conservation work on the ground in more than 50 countries.
The New York State Museum is a research-backed institution in Albany, New York, United States. It is located on Madison Avenue, attached to the south side of the Empire State Plaza, facing onto the plaza and towards the New York State Capitol. The museum houses art, artifacts, and ecofacts that reflect New York’s cultural, natural, and geological development. Operated by the New York State Education Department's Office of Cultural Education, it is the oldest and largest state museum in the US. Formerly located in the State Education Building, the museum now occupies the first four floors of the Cultural Education Center, a ten-story, 1,500,000-square-foot (140,000 m2) building that also houses the New York State Archives and New York State Library.
Zilia Sánchez Dominguez is a Puerto Rico-based Cuban artist from Havana. She started her career as a set designer and an abstract painter for theatre groups in Cuba before the Cuban revolution of 1953-59. Sanchez blurs the lines between sculpture and painting by creating canvases layered with three dimensional protrusions and shapes. Her works are minimal in color, and have erotic overtones.
The Mannahatta Project is a Wildlife Conservation Society research project in historical ecology led by landscape ecologist Eric W. Sanderson that principally ran for 10 years from 1999-2009, reconstructing the island at the point of first contact between the Dutch ship Halve Maen and the Lenape in 1609. The work culminated in the publication of Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City in 2009 and has subsequently developed as the Welikia Project and in influence on other environmental initiatives.
Arturo C. Porzecanski is a Uruguayan-born economist who has spent his entire adult life in the United States.
Lindsay E. Zanno is an American vertebrate paleontologist and a leading expert on theropod dinosaurs and Cretaceous paleoecosystems. She is the Head of Paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and an Associate Research Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University.
Danielle "Hopi" Elisabeth Hoekstra is an evolutionary biologist working at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she is Dean of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Her lab uses natural populations of rodents to study the genetic basis of adaptation. She is the C.Y. Chan Professor of Arts and Sciences and the Xiaomeng Tong and Yu Chen Professor of Life Sciences in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University. She is also the Curator of Mammals at the Museum of Comparative Zoology and a Harvard College Professor. In 2014, Hoekstra became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. In 2016, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and in 2017, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Hoekstra became the Edgerley Family Dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences in August 2023.
Jeannine Cavender-Bares is Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and Director of the Harvard University Herbaria. She is also adjunct professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution & Behavior at the University of Minnesota, where she served on the faculty for over two decades. Her research integrates evolutionary biology, ecology, and physiology by studying the functional traits of plants, with a particular focus on oaks.
Adrienne Edwards is a New York–based art curator, scholar, and writer. Edwards is currently the Engell Speyer Family Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Laura "Polly" Lada-Mocarski was an American craftsperson, rare book scholar, bookbinder, book preservationist, educator, and the inventor of the PolyCase, an exhibition display for old and rare books. She served as faculty in the Graphic Arts Department at Yale University.
Maura Reilly is the director of the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, and previously served as the founding curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Reilly is also known for developing the concept of ‘curatorial activism’.
Helene Lois Kaplan was an American lawyer and nonprofit executive. She was of counsel at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and was the first person to serve as two-time Chairman of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Leticia "Letty" E. Afuang is a Filipina biologist and wildlife conservationist currently working as a professor under the Animal Biology Division of the Institute of Biological Sciences (IBS) at the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), located in the Philippine province of Laguna. She is also one of the main curators for the Zoological and Wildlife Collection at the UPLB Museum of Natural History. While known as the "Snake Lady," her research as a herpetologist also focuses on other reptiles, amphibians and a wide array of herpetofauna across the Philippine islands. As an advocate for environmental sustainability, she has founded multiple organizations such as the Mindoro Biodiversity Conservation Foundation and the Biodiversity Conservation Society of the Philippines.
Eleanor Sterling was an conservationist and biologist. She was the director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History and also became the director of Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa (UHM).
Kim Conaty is an American art historian and museum curator currently serving as the Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Muriel Oxenberg Murphy was an American museum curator, art historian and socialite. She was born on October 09, 1926, in New York, and died of breast cancer on October 13, 2008, at the age of 82. She was best known for her salon in New York, after co-founding the Department of American Painting and Sculpture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She was an associate producer of the Firing Line television show and also a director of the American Chess Federation. She was a member of the Century Association.