Core Staff

Sean (he/him) is a contract conservation ecologist broadly interested in how people and nature interact with freshwater ecosystems. He draws on tools and perspectives from conservation biology, spatial data science, molecular ecology, and socio-ecology to better understand how freshwater ecosystems are changing and help guide actionable decisions about how they are managed. Sean’s early experiences exploring both heavily degraded rivers and streams shaped by rust belt industry, contrasted with the healthy, vibrant streams of Appalachia in Pennsylvania and West Virginia continue to drive his interest in freshwater restoration and conservation.

Sean received his PhD in Geography and Environmental Sustainability from the University of Oklahoma, where he developed spatial conservation planning tools for environmental flows implementation, and MSc in Biology from Marshall University, where he used eDNA to better understand the causes of eastern hellbender salamander population declines. Sean previously spent time as a Science to Action Fellow with the National Climate Adaptation Science Center, Postdoc at Penn State University, and Research Ecologist at the US Geological Survey.