Bio/Research
As Director of TBI, Dino will continue to enhance the institute’s operations and prestige. In addition to
a close partnership with Stony Brook colleagues, Dino will work with the TBI International Advisory Board, which supports TBI’s fundraising
efforts. They are tremendous advocates for TBI’s success and have played a pivotal
role in securing resources, including philanthropic support and faculty lines.
Dino is internationally respected for his evolutionary biology and entomological research,
biodiversity conservation work, and natural history writing, and he is widely known
as one of Kenya’s leading biological scientists. Dino graduated with a B.A. in Anthropology from Indiana University in 1999 and worked
on his M.Sc. in Botany at the University of KwaZulu Natal in 2004. He earned his Ph.D.
in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University in 2011 before joining
TBI as a postdoctoral fellow at Stony Brook University. Dino has taught in the TBI Origins field school every semester it has been offered since
Spring 2011.
On completion of his postdoc, Dino took on the position of Resident Academic Director of the TBI Origins Field School,
a position that he held for three years before accepting the position of Executive
Director of the Mpala Research Center in Laikipia, Kenya, which is overseen by Princeton
University, the Smithsonian Institution, the Kenyan Wildlife Service, and the National
Museums of Kenya. During his seven years as Director, Dino dramatically improved operations and finances at Mpala and greatly expanded the number
of institutions conducting research there.
Dino’s research in the Turkana Basin has included the description of new species of bees,
including some of the most ancient lineages of bees known and the discovery of genera
previously not recorded from Africa. Dino is also a Co-PI of the Turkana Genome Project, which brings together dozens of international
scientists to look at the complex interactions among human genes, the environment
and adaptation in a world that is increasingly mismatched between our biology and
technology/culture. Dino is actively building links and collaborations globally to expand the scientific frontiers
of research at TBI. This includes building on the excellent fundamental research around
human origins and evolution, to other disciplines that intersect with the fields of
evolution and ecology, climate change and the future of sustainable human existence
and development.
