The keynote speakers for RAFWE/WFGRS 2024 are Julia Parrish and Abby Phillips Metzger.
Julia Parrish || Citizen Science, Community Science, and Science Identity in a Warming World
About Julia Parrish:
Julia's work is centered on the intersection between marine ecology, conservation and resource management, and how non-experts and non-scientists can be involved in documenting pattern, collecting baseline information and being an essential part of a science team. She runs a large citizen science project, the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team, or COASST. Her research and academic interests follow three major routes: behavior of organisms living in groups (like schools of fish and colonially nesting seabirds), seabird ecology (mainly Common Murres—a ubiquitous fish-eating coastal species in the northern hemisphere), and marine conservation.
Abby Phillips Metzger || Finding Your Science Story: Conservation, Community, and Compassion
About Abby Phillips Metzger:
Abby Phillips Metzger is a science communicator, author, paddler, and mother. Prior to her current appointment as the Communications Director for Global Forest Generation, she worked for nearly a decade as a science writer and communicator in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at OSU. She has also worked in journalism, book publishing, and environmental education. Abby is the author of Meander Scars, a series of essays about river restoration; and a co-editor of Wild in the Willamette, a collection of outdoor adventures within the mid-Willamette Valley watersheds. Her writing was recently recognized as a top pick for the Best Shortform Science Writing and the Best of the Northwest Science Writing Awards. She lives near the Willamette River with her husband and two children.