Susan Wiser

President
Landcare Research
P.O. Box 69040
Lincoln, 7640 New Zealand
Email: president@iavs.org

I am a Senior Research Scientist at Landcare Research, New Zealand. My current research interests include classification and mapping of NZ vegetation, ecoinformatics and the integration of plot-based with remotely sensed data to address a range of ecological questions. I have been a member of IAVS since 1994, served on the JVS editorial board (2000-2003), was an Associate Editor (2003-2007), served on the IAVS Awards Committee (2009-2011), served on the steering committee of IAVS Working Group on Ecoinformatics (2013-), and have been on the IAVS Council and served as the IAVS Secretary from 2011-2019.  My goals for IAVS include ensuring that our society continues to remain financially solvent, that we are wise in our navigation and adjustment to rapid changes in scientific publishing that affect our journals and that we increase our membership by broadening the spectrum of disciplines included in vegetation science and encouraging more involvement of women, early career researchers and those from Australasia and the Pacific.

David Zelený

Secretary
National Taiwan University
Taipei, Taiwan
Email: zeleny@ntu.edu.tw

Alessandra Fidelis

Vice President
Universidade Estadual Paulista 
Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brazil
Email: afidelis@rc.unesp.br

I obtained my Bachelor Degree at the Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil) and my Master’s and PhD at the Technische Universität München (Germany). Since 2011 I have been an Assistant Professor at the Departamento de Botânica, at the Universidade Estadual Paulista (Brazil). My research is focus on tropical savanna and grasslands, including seed and fire ecology, as well as biological invasions. I have been a member of IAVS since 2010, but I have been attending IAVS symposia since I was a graduate student. I am also the chair of the Global Sponsorship Committee since 2014.

Monika Janišová

Vice President
Institute of Botany
Slovak Academy of Sciences 
Ďumbierska 1
974 01 Banská Bystrica
Slovak Republic
Email: monika.janisova@gmail.com

I am a researcher at Institute of Botany of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, focusing mainly on grasslands (classification, diversity, management) and population biology of grassland species. I have been a member of IAVS since 1993; however, I started to attend its symposia just in 2007. Since 2008, I have served as one of the chairs of the European Dry Grassland Group (EDGG), which later became one of the IAVS working groups. My main task has been the preparation and design of the Bulletin of the EDGG. I co-organized the European Dry Grassland Meeting in 2010 (Smolenice, Slovakia) and the IAVS Post-symposium Excursion in 2015 (Carpathian Mountains, Slovakia). I am constantly impressed by the Earth’ vegetation and I feel very well in the company of vegetation scientists. That’s why I agreed to serve as one of the IAVS officers dealing mainly with preparation of IAVS Bulletin.

Martin Diekmann

Vice President
Vegetation Ecology and Conservation Biology
FB 2, University Bremen, Leobener Straße 5
28359 Bremen, Germany
Email: mdiekman@uni-bremen.de

I obtained my PhD at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, and since 2001 have been a professor at the University of Bremen, Germany. I have been a member of IAVS already for 25 years, and after having served as Publications Officer of the association I was the President of IAVS between 2011 and 2019. My main interests in vegetation science include vegetation-environment relationships, time-series analysis and conservation biology, with a particular focus on forest and grassland ecosystems. I like field work and being out also in my spare time, for example when mountain walking. A main goal of my work with IAVS is to contribute to make the association more attractive for young scientists.  

Javier Loidi

Vice President
Dept. de Biología Vegetal & Ecología
Univ. del País Vasco, Leioa/Lejona, A.P. 644
ES-48080   BILBAO,  Spain
Email: javier.loidi@ehu.eus

I obtained my PhD at the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain) in 1981 where I worked until 1988. That year I moved to the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, where I teach so far as Professor. My membership in IAVS started in 1976, when I spent a period in Germany with R. Tüxen as student, and I belong to the Council since the early nineties. My interest in vegetation sciences focuses in forest ecology, vegetation classification, influence of the climatic changes and biodiversity patterns in some particular environments as mountain ecosystems. My intention as regards the IAVS is to increase the attractiveness of our association to scientists, particularly to the younger ones and those original from underrepresented territories. I believe that IAVS should aspire to host all vegetation scientists of the world and to facilitate contacts and scientific relationships among them.

Peter Minchin 

Vice President
Department of Biological Sciences
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
Campus Box 1651, Edwardsville, IL 62026, USA
Email: pminchi@siue.edu

I was born in Hobart, capital of the island of Tasmania, which is one of the six states of Australia. Growing up surrounded by nature stimulated my interest in botany and ecology, which I studied at the University of Tasmania, ultimately obtaining a Ph.D. in plant community ecology in 1984. As a postdoc, the first international conference that I attended was the IAVS Working Group for Theoretical Vegetation Science, which was held in Uppsala in 1985.  I joined IAVS and became a regular attendee of conferences and field trips. I was invited to join the editorial board of Vegetatio and later was one of the first Associate Editors of the Journal of Vegetation Science. I met my future wife, Loretta Battaglia (who is a wetland ecologist), at the IAVS annual Symposium in Houston, Texas in 1995 and we married after I moved to the USA in 1998. I am now a Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, USA. My research focuses on the development of robust multivariate techniques for data summarization, trend seeking and hypothesis testing, with applications in conservation and ecological restoration.  I teach ecology, biostatistics, and conservation biology. I was elected Chair of the IAVS North American Section in 2013 and was first elected to IAVS Council and the Governing Board in 2015. I currently chair the Publications Committee, which oversees our journals (Journal of Vegetation Science, Applied Vegetation Science, and Vegetation Classification and Survey) and our other publications.  I was co-Chair of the Local Organizing Committee for the 2018 IAVS Symposium, which was held in Bozeman, Montana, USA and included field trips to Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Glacier National Parks.  I consider IAVS to be my scientific home and will continue to work to help the association achieve its goals.  

Caroline Gutierrez

Administrator, ex officio non-voting member
IAVS Business Office
Boulevard du Souverain, 280
1160 Brussels Belgium
E-mail: admin@iavs.org