Katherine HEINEMAN

I am originally from the midwestern United States with degrees from the University of Nebraska and a doctorate in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology from University of Illinois-Urbana. For my graduate work, I explored how tropical tree diversity depends on underlying soil diversity in Panamanian rainforests in collaboration with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. I became involved in rare species conservation through my work with the Center for Plant Conservation, a network of botanical institutions in North America, where I worked to increase access to the training resources for rare plant seed banking, and worked to create data products and synthetic research to improve curation practice for botanical garden practitioners. 

My role at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance as the Program Officer for the IUCN Center for Species Survival Biodiversity Banking is to catalyze collaboration between the SDZWA's incredible collection of animal gametes, cell lines, native plant seed, rare species DNA and more, known as the SDZWA Wildlife Biodiversity Bank, with the broader IUCN community. Our hope is to increase capacity to biobanking globally through data sharing, synthetic research, and cross training in this critical discipline.