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Organization for Tropical Studies Names New President

Losos will lead an international consortium of 63 universities and research institutions in training graduate students in tropics-related research

Elizabeth Losos, Ph.D., will become the president and CEO of the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) on March 1, 2005.

In her new position, Losos will lead an international consortium of 63 universities and research institutions and a staff of about 160 in training graduate students in tropics-related research at OTS' three field stations in Costa Rica and partner sites in other countries.

"We're going to train more biologists from tropical countries alongside North American biologists," Losos said, "helping to place the fate of tropical forests in the hands of those who live there." She said OTS' current partnerships with Latin American research institutions will be the foundation for that effort.

"Most of the plants and animals live in the tropics, and most of those remain unknown to science," said E.O. Wilson, a professor emeritus at Harvard University and author of such influential science books as The Diversity of Life and The Unity of Knowledge. "OTS is the premier organization in the world engaged in basic and applied research on this important and complex part of the biosphere."

"Under Dr. Losos' direction, we can expect to see this distinguished tradition continued and expanded," he said.

While making fiscal stability a priority, Losos also plans to explore ways to expand the organization's graduate courses, research partnerships, undergraduate study abroad programs and environmental policy initiatives.

Losos comes to OTS from the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Tropical Forestry Science, where she directs an international forest research network working in 14 countries on four continents.

"Liz brings a good sense of what's going on in tropical forest research around the world," said Don Wilson, the chair of the OTS board of directors and a senior scientist and curator of mammals at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. "You need that perspective in tropical biology. You can't just look at what's happening in Costa Rica or South Africa or anywhere else, you have to see how results compare across regions."

Losos takes over the helm of OTS from Donald Stone, a Duke University professor emeritus in botany, who was the executive director of OTS from 1976 to 1996 and interim CEO since 2003.

"We've got over 40 years of knowledge about the tropics built up at OTS," Stone said. "For the last few years, we've been finding ways to apply that knowledge -- to forestry practices, to questions about climate change, to trade policy and environmental regulations."

"Liz has the right background to keep that up: basic research and outreach to other constituencies," he said.

Losos holds a doctorate in biology from Princeton University and a master's degree in public affairs from the same school. She served as an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland for two years and has taught OTS courses for environmental policymakers in Costa Rica.

For her dissertation, Losos worked in Peru's Manu National Park, studying how various modes of seed dispersal affected forest succession. Since then, she has published on forest community ecology and forest policy, including the effect of foreign debt on deforestation, natural forestry management and the role of tropical forests in carbon sequestration.

With OTS being headquartered at Duke University in Durham, N.C., Losos said she sees opportunities to collaborate with many scholars at Duke, especially at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences with its Center for Tropical Conservation and Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

"We want to get the science out of the forests and the policymakers into them," she said.

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The Organization for Tropical Studies, based at Duke University, is an independent, nonprofit consortium of 63 universities and research institutions from the United States, Latin America, Australia and South Africa. It trains graduate and undergraduate students, facilitates research, participates in tropical forest conservation, teaches ecology courses to non-science professionals and maintains three research stations in Costa Rica.