Miguel Fernandez is from La Paz, Bolivia. He has developed his passion for nature working on a riverboat in the Bolivian Amazon and participating in biodiversity surveys carried out by "Conservación y Medio Ambiente", a sister branch of Armonia (Bird Life) NGO. PDF . This year he was awarded with the Lakeside Foundation scholarship to pursue a masters degree in the Dept. of Geography at San Francisco State University . Working with his adviser Dr. Healy Hamilton as a member of the CBRI team, he is developing skills in biogeography, remote sensing and geographical information systems for the purposes of mapping and analyzing the biodiversity data residing in natural history museum specimen collections. Last year he participated in the highly competitive Research Training Program of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. His research project involved georeferencing specimen data from the NMNH Herpetology Dept. in order to test a predictive model of distribution for a highly representative family of frogs ( Leptodactylidae ) in his home country of Bolivia . PDF. After he completes his masters in Geography he hopes to pursue a PhD in Biology in order to become a leader in a new generation of Conservation Biogeographers in Latin America.

Quoted on his aspirations, "I want to revolutionize the way of building predictive distribution models using a multitaxa approach for my country. I believe that the new communication technologies can shorten spatial barriers and be used to make available for conservation issues all the information housed in Natural History Museums collections all over the world. Education is very addictive once you have tried you just want more, I want to pursue my education into a PhD program (big smile) and of course publish in Nature some day."

This winter Miguel will travel to Bolivia in order to reinforce a team of local Biologists involved in building a photographic digital database of the Bolivian Herbarium."