Meet our speakers

Emma Briggs, M.S.

Emma Briggs is a first-year doctoral student in Dr. Kamal Gandhi’s Forest Entomology Lab at the University of Georgia. Her graduate research investigates the role of streamside management zones (SMZs) as habitat refugia for flower-visiting bee and stinging wasp communities in southeastern working pine forests. Emma is an avid entomologist, forest ecologist, and previous Society of American Foresters Mollie Beattie Visiting Scholar. She is dedicated to improving the conservation of native pollinators in millions of acres of private working forests, ensuring that these incredibly important insects continue to survive and thrive in the face of unprecedented anthropogenic change.

Jesse Popp, PhD

Dr. Jesse Popp is a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Environmental Science at the University of Guelph. She is a member of Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory with Anishinaabe and mixed European heritage and strives to promote inclusive science that embraces multiple ways of knowing while on her journey of learning and sharing.

As the PI of the Wildlife, Indigenous Science, Ecology (WISE) Lab, she and her research team work to weave Indigenous and Western knowledge systems to contribute to the advancement of environmental and ecological science. Together, the WISE Lab team embraces holistic and transdisciplinary research approaches to investigate ecological research questions identified by the Indigenous communities and organizations that they partner with. Through Indigenous-led projects that uplift Indigenous values and ways of knowing, Dr. Popp and her team contribute to environmental caretaking and the progression of the natural sciences in the spirit of reconciliation.

Myriam Heuertz, PhD

Myriam Heuertz is a research director at the French National Institute for Food, Agriculture and the Environment. She holds a PhD from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium and has postdoctoral experience in several European countries.

She is interested in population and conservation genetics of plants, mostly trees, from species-rich tropical and Mediterranean ecosystems. She characterizes the drivers of adaptive evolution in species and in communities of closely related species on local and regional scales, especially in tropical forest trees.

She also develops scientific best practices for genetic indicators and is active in the science-policy interface, promoting the use of genetic indicators to facilitate management decisions in relation to the protection of genetic diversity.

Renezita Come, PhD

Renezita Sales-Come is a licensed Forester and holds a full professor rank in the College of Forestry and Environmental Science at Visayas State University, Leyte, Philippines. She has been in academia for 22 years, teaching silviculture, agroforestry and tree physiology.

Aside from mentoring her students, Dr. Come is also active in conducting research on topics related to biodiversity, carbon storage and sequestration assessment of various land-uses and tree-based systems in the Philippines.

In 2016 to 2019, she served as Project Coordinator for a project funded by the Thuenen Institute in Germany on Landscape Forestry in the Tropics. Presently, she is doing another project on nature-based solutions with the Thuenen Institute and funded by the Velux Foundation, Switzerland. Dr. Come held various administrative positions at Visayas State University, including Department Chairperson of for the Department of Forest Science, and Dean of the College of Forestry and Environmental Science from 2012 to 2015.

Tatiana Rojas

Tatiana Rojas is an economist from Universidad de los Andes (Colombia) with a Master of Science in Development Economics and Policy from the University of Manchester (UK).

She is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Hohenheim's Hans-Ruthenberg Institute for Tropical Agricultural Sciences (Stuttgart, Germany), where her research focuses on the governance of biodiversity-based value chains in Colombia, with a particular emphasis on the case of Bactris guineensis. Her work aims to analyze institutional arrangements and develop strategies to harness the potential of native useful plants, contributing to Colombia’s bioeconomy through a socio-biodiversity lens. With over a decade of professional experience, Tatiana has successfully led and implemented research and investment projects in biocommerce and the bioeconomy, specializing in the development of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) across various rural regions of Colombia.

Trudy Paap, PhD

Dr Trudy Paap is a Research Fellow with the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute, University of Pretoria. She has worked as a forest pathologist, dealing with plant health issues in Australia and South Africa. Her research has focused on the impact of native and invasive pests and pathogens on natural and planted forests and urban trees. She has extensive experience in surveillance and detection of new and emerging pest and pathogen risks, including the first detection of the polyphagous shot hole borer in South Africa, through her involvement in programmes such as the International Plant Sentinel Network.

Viviana Salinas

Laura Viviana Salinas Vargas is a researcher at the Humboldt Institute and Forest Engineering of the Francisco José de Caldas District University, Colombia. Currently, she is pursuing a master's degree in Forest Management, Use and Conservation at the same university. Her research interests focus on plant functional ecology, particularly the study of how functional traits of plant species influence ecological processes. She has led studies on germination, establishment and adaptability of native species, providing key information for conservation strategies of the tropical dry forest in Colombia. Her experience includes long-term monitoring of plant populations, analysis of functional responses to environmental factors, and implementation of ecological restoration projects in collaboration with local communities and international organizations.

Weiye Wang, PhD

Dr. Weiye Wang is Associated Professor at Renmin University, China. She is a conservation social scientist with a range of research interests around the central theme of biodiversity conservation and its relationship with society. Her work relies primarily on fieldworks. She has conducted fieldwork in 70+ protected areas across China.

Her research has been supported by numerous grants from the National Key Research and Development Program of China to the National Natural Science Foundation of China, French Development Agency and the Ruffor Foundation. Her work has been published in World Development, Land Use Policy, Forest Policy and Economics and, Journal of Contemporary China, among others.

Dr. Wang holds her PhD and MS from the University of British Columbia, Canada, and a BM in rural development from Renmin University of China.