David M. Lodge

David M. Lodge is the Francis J. DiSalvo director of Cornell University’s Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.  He is an internationally recognized environmental scientist, with expertise in environmental risk assessment, freshwater and marine coastal ecology, ecosystem services, bioeconomics, and invasive species (including from ships’ ballast and biofouling). His research has improved ecological forecasting to better inform environmental risk assessment, natural resource management, and policy development.

Lodge is a leader in the development and application of environmental DNA (eDNA), a transformative technological tool for discovering unrecognized biodiversity, censusing aquatic biodiversity, and improving the management of imperiled and invasive species. Lodge has a long history of collaborating with engineers, economists, historians, theologians, and philosophers and has partnered with non-profit organizations and corporations to bring his scientific work to the public policy arena.

He is past president of the Ecological Society of America, and former senior science advisor in the US Department of State’s Office of Polar Affairs. On numerous occasions, he has testified before the U.S. Congress and served as an expert witness in federal court. He served as the first chair of the U.S. government’s national Invasive Species Advisory Committee, led research on freshwater biodiversity as part of the United Nations’ Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and served on the scientific advisory boards for NOAA and the International Joint Commission.

He is a faculty member in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University.