Jedediah Brodie started his research career conducting a senior thesis at UCSC under the guidance of Professor Karen Holl studying the efficacy of grassland mitigation efforts on campus. He has gone on to become a leading researcher studying the effects of loss of wildlife from Asian tropical forests, as well as a strong advocate for tropical forest conservation. His papers have been published in leading journals such as Science, Ecology, and Bioscience.
After graduating from UCSC in 1997 with a double major in Biology and Environmental Studies, Jedediah worked and traveled for a couple of years before beginning his Ph.D. at the University of Montana. After completing his doctorate in 2007, he held research positions at Penn State and with the USGS Wildlife Cooperative Research Unit in Missoula, Montana. He is currently conducting research on a Fulbright Research Fellowship in Malaysia, and in fall 2012 will continue on to the at the University of British Columbia as Assistant Professor of Conservation Ecology.
Jedediah writes “I am interested in life on earth - how organisms interact and evolve, and how natural communities function. I primarily study mammals, plants, and their interactions at population and community scales, determining the factors that control abundance, distribution, and behavior. I mainly work in Southeast Asia right now, but I strive to explore as many parts of the world as I can; this helps place the findings of specific studies into a broader ‘biogeographic context’. To this end I have explored six continents and done field work in ecosystems ranging from the Alaskan tundra to the rainforests of Borneo and the deserts of southern Africa. It's been a fun journey so far!”
In reflecting back on his time at UCSC, Jedediah says “Though the formal training I got at UCSC was excellent, something else about my time there sticks out even more - the amazing people that I encountered. Among the other undergraduates, graduate students and faculty were quite a few people with that difficult-to-describe ‘spark’ of life and energy. Even more impressive, as I've traveled around over the 14 years since graduating (has it really been that long?!) I routinely run into people who studied at Santa Cruz but are now way out in the jungle in Borneo or teaching in South America or working for NGOs in Alaska. I believe that Santa Cruz attracts interesting and intelligent people and then trains them to realize their full potential.”
