Eric L. Berlow is an American

ecologist Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere levels. Ecology overlaps with the closely re ...

and

data scientist Data science is an interdisciplinary academic field that uses statistics, scientific computing, scientific methods, processing, scientific visualization, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge from potentially noisy, struct ...

. He co-founded a visual data interface company, which was acquired by

Rakuten is a Japanese technology conglomerate based in Tokyo, founded by Hiroshi Mikitani in 1997. Centered around the online retail marketplace Rakuten Ichiba, its businesses include financial services utilizing Fintech, digital content and communi ...

Inc. in 2016. He now runs Vibrant Data Labs, a social impact data science group currently focused the building on an open-source framework for tracking the flows of money to climate mitigation and resilience efforts on the ground. Prior to Vibrant Data Labs, Berlow was the founding director of the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...

's first science and education institute inside

Yosemite National Park Yosemite National Park ( ) is a List of national parks of the United States, national park of the United States in California. It is bordered on the southeast by Sierra National Forest and on the northwest by Stanislaus National Forest. The p ...

which facilitated efforts to leverage data for informing conservation policy and

natural resource management Natural resource management (NRM) is the management of natural resources such as Land (economics), land, water, soil, plants and animals, with a particular focus on how management affects the quality of life for both present and future generati ...

. Berlow is internationally recognized for his research on ecological complexity, with articles in ''Nature'', ''Science'', and ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences''. He is best known for his TED talks on simplifying complexity and finding hidden patterns in complex data. Berlow has received a TED Fellowship, a TED Senior Fellowship, an

Alexander Von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, natural history, naturalist, List of explorers, explorer, and proponent of Romanticism, Romantic philosophy and Romanticism ...

Fellowship, a

National Science Foundation The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is an Independent agencies of the United States government#Examples of independent agencies, independent agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government that su ...

Post-doctoral Fellowship, and a National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis Fellowship. He was named one of the top 100 Creatives by ''Origin'' magazine.

Education

Berlow completed his undergraduate studies at

Brown University Brown University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. It is the List of colonial colleges, seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the US, founded in 1764 as the ' ...

in 1988, earning a B.A. degree in biology. He received a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

degree from

Oregon State University Oregon State University (OSU) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Corvallis, Oregon, United States. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate degree programs and a variety of graduate and doctor ...

in 1995 in

marine ecology Marine ecosystems are the largest of Earth's aquatic ecosystems and exist in waters that have a high salt content. These systems contrast with freshwater ecosystems, which have a lower salt content. Marine waters cover more than 70% of the sur ...

with a thesis on

ecological complexity ''Ecological Complexity'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering the field of biocomplexity in the environment and theoretical ecology with special attention to papers that integrate natural and social processes at various spatio ...

, supervised by

Jane Lubchenco Jane Lubchenco (born December 4, 1947) is an American environmental scientist and marine ecologist who teaches and conducts research at Oregon State University. Her research interests include interactions between the environment and human well- ...

and Bruce A. Menge. He was a

Postdoctoral Fellow at the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after the Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkele ...

working with Carla D'Antonio on the ecology of mountain

ecosystem An ecosystem (or ecological system) is a system formed by Organism, organisms in interaction with their Biophysical environment, environment. The Biotic material, biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and en ...

s in the

Sierra Nevada The Sierra Nevada ( ) is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primari ...

Career

Berlow's research career has focused on ecology, food webs, and networks. He was the founding director of the University of California Sierra Nevada Research Station in

. Examples of his highly cited network ecology publications include a 2009 paper in PNAS for which he was the lead author focused on predicting interaction strengths in food webs, a 1999 paper in Nature on "Strong effects of weak interactions in ecological communities", and a 1994 paper in Ecological Monographs on the keystone species concept. He co-authored a paper that was among the top twenty most cited papers in Environment and Ecology from 1998-2008 entitled "Biodiversity - global biodiversity scenarios for the year 2100". Berlow has also contributed to conservation through his work on alpine meadows and threatened amphibians. In 2013 Berlow co-founded Vibrant Data Inc., a cloud-based data analytics platform for analyzing complex relationships. As a speaker at the TED Conferences, Berlow has given three presentations on topics including Simplifying Complexity, Mapping Ideas Worth Spreading, and The Ecological Structure of Collaboration.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Berlow, Eric Living people Year of birth missing (living people)