Department: Biodiversity and ecosystem responses to climate change Workshop 2025 speaker

Burt Kotler is Professor Emeritus of Desert Ecology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.  His expertise is in evolutionary ecology, community ecology, behavioral ecology, and foraging ecology.  The focus of his research is on predator-prey foraging games in communities of desert rodents and how the economics of foraging, tradeoffs of food and safety, and risk management lead to the mechanisms of species coexistence that underlie biodiversity. 

Carmela Marangi is a senior researcher at the Institute for Applied Mathematics of the National Research Council with expertise in dynamical systems, ecological modelling, and data analysis. She has authored numerous scientific publications and contributed to national and EU projects with a focus on environmental research and recently on service integration and workflow mapping in research infrastructures. She is active in global initiatives like GEO and member of LifeWatch ERIC Working Groups.

Laura Sadori, full professor of Systematic Botany at Sapienza University of Rome, is an Italian palynologist. She focuses on palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic reconstructions in the Mediterranean using lacustrine pollen records and assessing human impact.
orcid.org/0000-0002-2774-6705; WOS: 133 articles, H-Index 47, 6287 cit.; Scopus: 168 articles, H-Index 48, 7103 cit..

Prof. PhD. María Laura Carranza, Full Professor at the University of Molise and founder of EnviXlab, is an expert in landscape ecology, remote sensing, and biodiversity conservation. She has led several international research projects, contributed to ecological research networks such as LTER and LIFE-PLAN, and holds key internationalisation roles, including Vice Director of CUIA and ERASMUS delegate. She is also a recipient of the prestigious RAICES award. Prof. Carranza is actively engaged in academic teaching and coordinates the PhD program in Ecology and Territory.

Marino Gatto is professor emeritus of Ecology, Politecnico di Milano, Milan (Italy). His main research activity is ecological modelling. Current research interests include: parasite and disease ecology, management of marine resources, fragmented populations, extinction risk assessment, climate change ecology. President of the Italian Society of Ecology 2003-2006, member of the Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere and Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere e Arti. Author or coauthor of more than 250 articles, books and book chapters (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8063-9178 ).