Healy Hamilton

Searching for solutions to tropical deforestation, her masters thesis investigated the ecological roles of native, economically valuable tree species in northeastern Argentina. During time spent as an ecotour guide in the Peruvian Amazon, she encountered the Amazon river dolphins, the subject of her doctoral thesis. Healy spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar in Cali, Colombia, where she investigated the evolution, systematics, and conservation of river dolphins using genetic techniques. Healy completed her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley in 2001. She is a recipient of an Environmental Leadership Grant as the founding director of a biodiversity research and conservation program at the California Academy of Sciences, one of the world\'s largest natural history museums. Central to her research program is investigating the impacts of climate change on biological diversity.