Peter Daszak

Executive Director, Consortium for Conservation Medicine, based at Wildlife Trust

Dr. Peter Daszak is the Executive Director of the Consortium for Conservation Medicine. He directs the Consortium's programs in research, education, policy and practical conservation.

In 2005, Dr. Daszak coordinated the multi-national team that identified the origin of SARS: bats, not civets as previously thought.

Daszak is originally from Britain, where he earned a BS in Zoology and a PhD in Parasitology. His research focuses on the taxonomy, pathology and conservation impact of parasitic diseases, particularly those of non-mammalian vertebrates and invertebrates.

In collaboration with groups in Britain, Australia, and the United States, he discovered a previously unknown fungal disease of amphibians, chytridiomycosis, a major cause of frog population decline globally.

Dr. Daszak has adjunct positions at three American and two British universities; has served on committees of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, World Health Organization, National Academy of Sciences, and Department of the Interior; and has advised a range of governmental, commercial, and non-commercial organizations.

He has been published in Science and in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Daszak has received a number of awards, including the 2000 CSIRO medal for collaborative work on the amphibian disease chytridiomycosis, and his work has been the focus of extensive media coverage in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and US News & World Report. He has appeared on broadcasts such as CNN, ABC, NPR's Talk of the Nation, and NPR's Morning Edition.