Alex Dehgan | Extreme Conservation
Bio: Dr. Alex Dehgan is the CEO and co-founder of Conservation X Labs, an innovation and technology startup focused on conservation. Conservation X Labs both builds new technologies for addressing the underlying drivers of extinction, and harnesses open innovation & mass collaboration to attract new solvers and new solutions. Alex is also a Professor of the Practice of Sustainability and the Global Futures Fellow at Arizona State University. He previously served as the Chief Scientist at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), with rank of Assistant Administrator. Alex founded and led the Office of Science and Technology (OST), and creating the vision for and helped stand up the Global Development Lab, the Agency’s DARPA for Development. Alex was also part of the founding team of USAID’s Policy Bureau. Prior to USAID, Alex worked in multiple positions at the Dept. of State, including on the Policy Planning Staff and through overseas service under the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, using science to support bilateral diplomacy, including Arab-Israeli relations, engagement with Iran, through leading the science aspects of President Obama’s Cairo Initiative.
Alex was the founding country director of the Wildlife Conservation Society Afghanistan Program and helped create Afghanistan’s first national park. Alex is the author of the book, The Snow Leopard Project, which describes the effort, which was selected by the journal Nature’s book editor as one of the top five science books of 2019. Alex holds a Ph.D in Evolutionary Biology from The University of Chicago and a J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Alex has won multiple awards from the Departments of State and Defense, as well as being named an Icon of Science, the World Technology Award, and in 2020, being given the University of Chicago’s Medical and Biological Alumni Association’s highest honor.
Links: Conservation X Labs | twitter | book
Summary: Alex Dehgan takes conservation to the extremes. After doing his PhD work studying lemurs in Madagascar, Dehgan has brought his mission of ending human-induced extinction to a long list of precarious and unlikely places, including a heroic effort of national park creation in post-war Afghanistan. His current focus is bridging the gap between conservation and technology.
The mission of @conservationx is to end the sixth mass extinction. Alex gives an overview, and talks about the early and formative experiences that inspired him to action. pic.twitter.com/172TlVHn55
— science better (@scibetter) December 23, 2020
The problem of missing data in conservation and how that distorts our efforts to prioritize. pic.twitter.com/4XE1qkXt69
— science better (@scibetter) December 23, 2020
Stories from Alex's work in Afghanistan:
— science better (@scibetter) December 23, 2020
"Despite landmines and IEDs and everything in the country, it was the easiest place to do conservation." pic.twitter.com/I8PPMtZBKC
On the role of restoring wildlife as a way to restore cultural identity. pic.twitter.com/6TGvybGHWC
— science better (@scibetter) December 23, 2020