Leo Chan Gaskins (he/they) is a community ecologist, proud LGBTQ scientist, and David H. Smith Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Chicago. They investigate how trophic cascades and ecosystem engineering impact the diversity, structure, and function of wetlands, and how to harness positive species interactions to inform future conservation and restoration efforts. They earned their BS and PhD from Duke University and was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. Gaskins works to make science a welcoming and empowering place for queer and diverse scientists and helped to advocate for policy changes in academic publishing to allow trans people to change their names invisibly on previously published work.
Julia Baum holds the Faculty of Science President’s Chair at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada where she is also Professor of Ocean Ecology and Global Change in the Department of Biology, a Provost’s Engaged Scholar, and the Director of Coastal Climate Solutions Leaders, a transdisciplinary graduate training program. Her research group works to advance understanding of the impacts of climate change in the ocean, and to inform and catalyze climate solutions. Baum earned her B.Sc. from McGill University, and her M.Sc. and PhD from Dalhousie University. She was awarded a David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship in 2007, which she took up at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and a Schmidt Ocean Institute Fellowship in 2010, which she took up at University of California Santa Barbara before joining UVic as faculty in 2011. Baum has received numerous awards for her research, including being named an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in Ocean Sciences in 2011, a Pew Fellow in Marine Conservation in 2017, and an NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellow in 2018. She is an expert in coral reef ecology, fisheries and climate change impacts in the ocean, and ocean climate change solutions. Baum is a strong advocate for equity, diversity, and inclusivity in academia. She is committed to communicating science and the need for climate solutions to policy-makers and the public, and devotes considerable time to engagement through meetings, media appearances and public speaking engagements.