Chief Scientist and ERA Chair Holder
Dr. Liebhold recently retired from a 37-year career as a primary scientist with the USDA Forest Service. His academic background is in forest entomology. During his career, he has gained a reputation as one of the key scientists leading work on all types of biological invasions in forests. Liebhold‘s record of productivity places him as one of the top invasion scientists in the world. He has a strong record of leadership, having organised an International Union of Forest Research Organisations (IUFRO) task force on biological invasions, and several working groups at different ecological synthesis centres focusing on various aspects of biological invasions in forests. He has also served as an officer in several scientific organisations, organised international scientific conferences (ranging from 50 to 3000 participants), and held editorial positions with different top-tier scientific journals (including Ecology Letters, Ecography, and Biological Invasions). Given his reputation, Liebhold is regularly invited as the keynote speaker at numerous scientific conferences throughout the world and has received prestigious scientific awards, such as the IUFRO Scientific Achievement Award, Fellow of the Entomological Society of America, and Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science. Liebhold has a long record of international collaboration, having spent extensive periods as a visiting scientist in research laboratories in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Sweden, Spain, and the Czech Republic. Liebhold also has extensive experience participating in synthesis centre working groups and served on scientific advisory boards of both the National Institute for Mathematical BioSciences (NIMBios) and the National Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS).
Project coordinator
Tomáš Hlásny is a professor of Forest Biology at the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague. His work focuses on forest disturbance regimes, their changes driven by climate change, and adaptation strategies. He has made significant contributions to understanding the causes and impacts of recent bark beetle outbreaks across Europe and to developing innovative management and policy frameworks to address such disturbances. He is actively involved at the science-policy interface, contributing to the formulation of the EU forest risk strategy, advising national decision-makers and policymakers, and engaging in numerous outreach activities. His responsibilities include integrating the Forest Invasions Synthesis Centre Prague within the CZU environment, maximizing the Centre’s spillover impact, managing human resources, and coordinating communication with the European Commission.
Arka Pal is a PhD student whose research focuses on the global synthesis of insect associations on non-native plants. He is developing AI techniques to compile database of herbivorous insects associated with non-native plants (invasive and planted) worldwide and plans to analyze this database to identify drivers of native and non-native insect richness of on non-native plants in different world regions and also determine how these drivers vary among different insect feeding guilds.
Aditya Ganesh is a PhD student whose research focuses on the global biogeography of Douglas-fir and associated insect herbivores. As art of this work, he seeks to identify environmental conditions associated with Douglas-fir invasiveness around the world and is comparing richness of insect herbivores (native and non-native) utilizing Douglas-fir in all world regions and climate matching Douglas-fir specialist insects and their damage in the Douglas-fir native range with world regions where Douglas-fir is planted. He is also sampling Douglas-fir foliage from various locations worldwide to compare levels of folivory.
