Featured Speakers

Horst Bleckmann

Horst Bleckmann is a German zoologist and neurobiologist with more than 160 scientific publications across diverse journals including both Science and Nature. Some of his most noted publications include research on the hydrodynamic stimuli of the lateral line in fish as well as measuring flow velocity and flow direction by spatial and temporal analysis of flow functions in nature. Since 1994, Dr. Horst Bleckmann has held a full professor position of zoology and comparative neurobiology at the Institute of Zoology at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University of Bonn, Germany. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Gießen in 1979, where he also undertook postdoctoral training for two years before becoming an associate professor at the University of Frankfurt. Afterwards, Dr. Bleckmann attended Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California as a postdoctoral fellow. He held another associate professor position at the University of Bielefeld and then a full professor position at the University of Darmstadt, prior to his current position. Additionally, Dr. Bleckmann has received many awards including the Karl Ritter von Frisch Medal of the German Zoological Society and the Prototype Nature Award of the Ministry of Science and Education in 2012.

Michael Love

Michael Love is a California civil engineer, and principal of Michael Love & Associates, Inc. in Arcata California since 1999. A graduate of Humboldt State University in Environmental Resources Engineering, he has extensive interdisciplinary experience in fisheries, fluvial geomorphology, fish passage, and hydraulics of riverine and estuarine systems. Love's work emphasizes applying geomorphic-based approaches to identify solutions. He has designed a wide variety of nature-like and technical fishways, and tide gates for fish passage and estuary enhancement. He was a lead investigator for NOAA Fisheries funded fish passage research from 1998 to 2003, which helped shape salmonid passage criteria for California. Love was a lead developer of the FishXing software and learning systems, and more recently co-authored a 2014 study into the regional implications of passage design flows on migration delay of West Coast salmonids. He regularly serves as an instructor for fish passage and stream restoration courses, and is a lead author of state and Federal publications on passage design and assessment, and reducing the impacts of roads on the aquatic environment.

John Waldman

John Waldman is an aquatic conservation biologist with a singular passion for diadromous fish. Dr. Waldman joined the faculty of Queens College as a tenured professor of Biology in 2004. For the previous twenty years he was employed by the Hudson River Foundation for Science and Environmental Research. He received his Ph.D. in 1986 from the Joint Program in Evolutionary Biology between the American Museum of Natural History and the City University of New York, and prior to that an M.S. in Marine and Environmental Sciences from Long Island University. Dr. Waldman has authored more than 90 scientific articles, edited a number of scientific volumes, and written several popular books, including the award-winning Heartbeats in the Muck: The History, Sea Life, and Environment of New York Harbor and, most recently, Running Silver: Restoring Atlantic Rivers and their Great Fish Migrations. He also is an occasional essayist for the New York Times, Yale Environment 360, and other periodicals. Dr. Waldman lives with his family within easy fishing distance of Long Island Sound in Sea Cliff, NY, and the Housatonic River in West Cornwall, CT.

Wendi Weber

Wendi Weber was appointed as Northeast Regional Director for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2011. As regional director, Weber oversees Service activities in 13 states from Maine to Virginia, and the District of Columbia, leading more than 1,000 Service employees working in more than 130 field offices, and 72 refuges that encompass more than 500,000 acres across a diverse array of habitat types. Weber joined the USFWS in 1998, beginning her career in Washington, D.C. and serving as chief of endangered species in the Northwest Region and assistant regional director for ecological services in the Midwest Region, coming to the Northeast Region as deputy regional director in 2007. Prior to working for the USFWS, Weber worked for the states of Florida and Georgia as a field biologist. Originally from Rochester, New York, Weber has a bachelor’s degree in zoology from the University of Rhode Island and a master’s degree in fisheries from the University of Georgia.