C BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF PANEL MEMBERS[edit | edit source]
RALPH W. PHILLIPS retired in 1982 from the post of deputy director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome, Italy, a post he held for four years. Among his earlier posts were that of professor and head, Animal Husbandry Department, Utah State University; senior animal husbandman in charge, Genetic Investigations, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA); chief, Animal Production Branch and deputy director, Agriculture Division, FAO; and executive director, International Organization Affairs, USDA. Among his special assignments were: serving as consultant on animal breeding to the governments of China and India for the U.S. Department of State in 1943-44; and as scientific secretary for agriculture of the United Nations Conference on Science and Technology for the Benefit of Developing Countries, in Ceneva, Switzerland, 1962-63. Dr. Phillips holds a B.S. degree in agriculture from Berea College (1930), M.A. (1931) and Ph.D. (1934) degrees from the University of Missouri, and Honorary D.Sc. degrees from Berea College and West Virginia University. He has been awarded the Berea College Distinguished Alumnus Award and the USDA's Distinguished Service Award. He is author or coauthor of some 240 scientific papers, review papers, chapters in books, and books on various aspects of physiology of reproduction, genetics, livestock production, and international agriculture. In his research, writings, and international activities, Dr. Phillips has given particular attention to breeding in relation to the environment and to the identification and conservation of valuable animal genetic resources. He is also the author of a definitive history of FAO entitled FAO: Its Origins, Formation and Evolution, 19451981 and an autobiography, The World Was My Barnyard. EDWARD S. AYENSU is currently senior advisor to the president of the African Development Bank. He is also president of ESA Associates, Washington, D.C., and former director of the Office of Biological Conservation, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. A citizen of Ghana, he received his B.A. in 1961 from Miami University in Ohio, M.Sc. from The George Washington University in 1963, and his Ph.D. in 1966 from the University of London. His research interests cover many areas of tropical biology. An internationally recognized expert on topics relating to science, technology, and development, especially in developing countries, he has also published extensively on tropical plants. Dr. Ayensu chairs and serves as a member of many international bodies. BONNIE V. BEAVER, professor of small animal medicine and surgery, Texas A&M University, College Station, is a specialist in animal behavior and problem behaviors, especially in domestic and laboratory animals. She received her B.S. and D.V.M. from the University of Minnesota and her M.S. from Texas A&M. In addition to being a popular speaker at scientific meetings, she is the author of five books and numerous book chapters and articles. KURT BENIRSCHKE, professor of pathology and reproductive medicine, University of California at San Diego, received his M.D. from the University of Hamburg, Germany, in 1948. He served on the faculties of Harvard and Dartmouth medical schools before coming to San Diego in 1970. At the San Diego Zoo he initiated a research department to advance knowledge in endangered species and now serves as a trustee of that organization. He has written on comparative mammalian cytogenetics, vanishing species, and human reproductive pathology. ROY D. CRAWFORD is professor of animal and poultry genetics at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. He received his B.S.A. from the University of Saskatchewan in 1955, his M.S. in animal genetics from Cornell University in 1957, and his Ph.D. in poultry genetics from the University of Massachusetts in 1963. He was employed as a scientist with the Research Branch of Agriculture Canada from 1957 to 1964 in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. He joined the faculty of the University of Saskatchewan in 1964. He was made a fellow of the Agricultural Institute of Canada in 1986 in recognition of his teaching and research work. His research interests include single gene genetics of poultry, and conservation of genetic resources in poultry and livestock. He has discovered and studied many mutants in chickens; some of them have biomedical importance, including one shown to be an animal genetic model of human grand mal epilepsy; some of them are potentially useful in food production, including an albinism mutant that is being developed for autosexing of commercial chicken broilers. He maintains a very large conservation collection of poultry genetic resources at the University of Saskatchewan and has prepared an inventory and assessment of Canada's poultry and livestock genetic resources. Dr. Crawford is a member of the Expert Panel on Animal Genetic Resources Conservation and Management, FAO/UNEP, Rome, and is a member of the Animal Resources Committee, Canadian Council on Animal Care, Ottawa. He serves on the International Scientific Committee for the French journal GTnTtique, STlection, +volution. He is a member of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (UK) and is a board member of the American Minor Breeds Conservancy (USA). TONY J. CUNHA, distinguished service professor emeritus, University of Florida, Gainesville, and dean emeritus, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, received his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in 1944. He has given more than 100 lectures in livestock feeding and nutrition in 40 foreign countries. He served as chairman of the Animal Nutrition Committee of the National Academy of Sciences and as a member of the NAS-NRC Board of Agriculture and Renewable Resources, Latin American Science Board, and as chairman of the livestock committee of two world food studies by NAS-NRC. He served as a member of the organizing committee for the first two World Conferences on Animal Production in Rome (1963) and Washington, D.C. (1968). He served as a member of the Title XII Board of International Food and Agricultural Joint Committee on Research and as chairman of its research priorities committee 1977-1981. He is author, editor, coeditor, or contributor to 30 books and author of more than 1,423 scientific and professional articles. He is a winner of 42 campus, state, national, and international honors and awards. DAVID E. DEPPNER, director of Trees for the Future in Silver Spring, Maryland, has been a consultant for international development projects involving livestock and poultry management and marketing for the past 14 years. He has served in 17 countries of Asia, Africa, and Central America. He has written on processing livestock rations under tropical conditions and about the Madurese breed of cattle found in East Java, Indonesia, where he spent two years studying this ancient breed. He is currently providing technical assistance to projects in several countries for the development of improved forage production as an answer to destruction of natural resources of tropical uplands caused by overgrazing. He received his B.Sc. in animal science from Ohio State University in 1954 and M.Sc. in livestock economics from Araneta University, the Philippines, in 1977. ELIZABETH L. HENSON is the director of the American Minor Breeds Conservancy, based in Pittsboro, North Carolina. She received an M.A. in zoology from Oxford University in 1980 and an M.Sc. in domestic animal breeding from Edinburgh University in 1981. Her primary interests are in the conservation of rare and endangered breeds and varieties of domestic livestock as a genetic resource for changing agricultural needs. She represented Britain at the first international conference on domestic animal conservation in Hungary in 1982, and was a member of the Office of Technology Assessment Committee on grassroots strategies to maintain genetic diversity in 1985. She is executive secretary for four British breed associations and is a member of the British Rare Breeds Survival Trust Technical Panel. DONALD L. HUSS was regional animal production officer of the FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, Santiago, Chile, before his retirement. He received a B.S. in 1949, an M.A. in 1954, and a Ph.D. in 1959, all at Texas A&M University. He was assistant professor of range management at Texas A&M before joining the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in 1967. He founded the FAO Regional Office's Small Animals for Small Farms programme in 1980. Professional assignments and travels in Latin America, the Caribbean' Near and Middle East, and Africa have contributed to his knowledge and experience in microlivestock development. Dr. Huss was recognized by Texas A&M University by being chosen as the recipient of the Memorial Student Center Appreciation and Distinguished Service Awards in 1958 and 196O, respectively, and Honour Professor in the College of Agriculture in 1966 67. He also received the Society for Range Management's Outstanding Service and Achievement Award in 1975 and its Fellow Award in 1978. DAVID RICHARD LINCICOME has been a guest scientist with the Animal Parasitology Institute, United States Department of Agriculture Experiment Station, Beltsville, Maryland, since 1978, having retired as professor of parasitology, Howard University, Washington, D.C., in 1970. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees cum laude simultaneously in 1937 from the University of Illinois and a Ph.D. in tropical medicine from the Tulane Medical School, New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1941. His principal research interests have centered around morphologic studies on Acanthocephala, molecular exchanges of dependent cells and their environments, and diagnosis of parasitic diseases. He has been a breeder of Nubian and American pygmy goats for the past 20 years. Dr. Lincicome is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the American Dairy Goat Association and is past president of the National Pygmy Goat Association. He was founder and long time trustee of the American Dairy Goat Association Research Foundation. He is also past president of the Helminthological Society and currently serves the society as archivist. He received the Helminthological Society's Anniversary Award in 1975. He was founder and, for 27 years, editor of the journal Experimental Parasitology, and is the author and editor of more than 180 scientific contributions. THOMAS E. LOVEJOY is a tropical biologist and ornithologist. He is assistant secretary for external affairs, Smithsonian Institution' Washington, D.C. He was formerly executive vice president for the World Wildlife Fund-U.S., chairman of the Wildlife Preservation Trust International, and a member of two commissions of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. At present, Dr. Lovejoy is a principal investigator of the world's largest controlled ecological experiment, which is attempting to determine the optimum size for parks and reserves. This project, conceived and designed by Dr. Lovejoy, is called "the Minimum Critical Size of Ecosystems" and is a joint program of World Wildlife Fund-U. S. and Brazil's National Institute for Amazon Research. Dr. Lovejoy is also the principal advisor for NATURE (WNET/THIRTEEN, New York), a series that he started in 1980. As principal advisor, he recommends program content and oversees the factual accuracy of the program scripts. A member of 11 scientific societies, Dr. Lovejoy has received grants from 16 foundations and institutions and written more than 100 articles for various national and International publications. He has published three books, Key Environments, Pergamon Press, Oxford; Nearctic Avian Migrants in the Neotropics, a Department of the Interior publication; and Conservation of Tropical Forest Birds, an ICPB publication. He is currently working on The Magnificent Exception, a book on people and the biosphere. ARNE W. NORDSKOG is professor emeritus, Department of Animal Science, Iowa State University. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota between 1937 and 1943. His training and principal area of research has been in quantitative genetics, but by about 1960 his interests shifted to immunogenetics and more recently to molecular genetics. He has traveled widely, spending two years as an instructor in agriculture at the University of Alaska (1937-39), and has been an NSF Research Fellow at Cal Tech (1960), a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota (1966), an FAO lecturer at the Indian Veterinary Institute (1973), and an FAO-sponsored lecturer on poultry breeding in China (1979). He has acted as a consultant to a commercial breeder in Japan for 20 years. He has been the major professor at Iowa State for more than 60 M.S. and Ph.D. candidates and has published more than 150 scientific papers. Dr. Nordskog is an honorary member of the Norwegian Poultry Breeding Association, a fellow of the Poultry Science Association, and a fellow of the AAAS. In 1972, he was the recipient of the Poultry Science Distinguished Service Research Award. LINDA M. PANEPINTO, swine research consultant, was director of the Colorado State University Swine Laboratory through 1988. She earned her B.S. in animal sciences at Colorado State University in 1972. In 1973 she joined the research team developing Yucatan miniature swine at Colorado State University, where she was given primary responsibility for colony management, protocol development, and genetic selection programs. In 1977, she designed an experimental research program for the development of a line of Yucatan pigs with a genetic propensity for exceptionally small size. She has continued her work in that area and has developed the Yucatan Micropig, described elsewhere in this publication. Her other major professional area of interest has been the design of facilities and equipment for swine with emphasis on animal comfort and minimizing stress. Her invention, known as the Panepinto Sling, has been widely adopted as the primary restraint method for numerous medical schools and research facilities using swine in the laboratory. She has published extensively in the field. KURT J. PETERS is professor of animal breeding and husbandry in the tropics and subtropics, University of Gottingen, and is currently director of research at the International Livestock Centre for Africa. He received his Dr. Agr. degree from the Technical University of Berlin in 1975. He has undertaken research in livestock production development in Southeast Asia and Africa. The major focus of his research has been small animals, with special attention given to the potential of unconventional animals. Early in 1985 he assumed his present position directing research at the International Livestock Centre for Africa. JOHN A. PINO is a senior fellow of the National Research Council, Board on Agriculture, and is currently the project director of the study "Managing Global Genetic Resources: Agricultural Imperatives." He received his B.S. in agriculture in 1944-47 and Ph.D. in zoology in 1951 from Rutgers University. As an associate professor he taught and did research in the Department of Poultry Science at Rutgers until 1955 when he accepted a position with the Rockefeller Foundation as animal scientist with the Mexican Agricultural Program, becoming the associate director of that program in 1960. In 1965 he was transferred to the Rockefeller headquarters in New York and became director of the Agricultural Science Program in 1970. Most of his career has been in international agricultural development. He retired from the Foundation in 1983 and went to Washington to become agricultural science advisor at the InterAmerican Development Bank until July 1986 when he accepted his present position. Dr. Pino has been a member of the Board on Agriculture since 1983 and previously from 1973 to 1977. HUGH POPENOE is professor of soils, agronomy, botany, and geography, and director of the Center for Tropical Agriculture and International Programs (Agriculture) at the University of Florida. He received his B.S. from the University of California at Davis in 1951 and his Ph.D. in soils from the University of Florida in 1960. His principal research interest has been in the area of tropical agriculture and land use. His early work on shifting cultivation is one of the major contributions to this system. He has traveled and worked in most of the countries in the tropical areas of Latin America, Asia, and Africa. His current interests include improving indigenous agricultural systems of small landholders, particularly with the integration of livestock and crops. He was chairman of the Advisory Committee on Technology Innovation and a member of the Board on Science and Technology for International Development (under whose aegis this report is presented). He chaired the BOSTID report panels on water buffalo and little-known Asian animals. Currently, he is on the International Advisory Committee of the National Science Foundation and serves as U.S. Board Member for the International Foundation of Science. MICHAEL HILL ROBINSON, director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Zoological Park, is an animal behaviorist and a tropical biologist. Before his appointment to the National Zoo, Dr. Robinson served as deputy director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, which he joined in 1966 as a tropical biologist. He received his Ph.D. from Oxford University after being awarded his B.S., summa cum laude, from the University of Wales. His scientific interests include predator-prey interactions, evolution of adaptations, tropical biology, courtship and mating behavior, phenology of arthropods, and freshwater biology. In the course of his studies, Dr. Robinson has done research in the United States and throughout the developing world. Recent publications include articles on predator-prey interactions, tropical forest conservation, reproductive behavior in spiders, and the function and purpose of zoos in relation to education and conservation. Dr. Robinson's favorite animals are cats, of all kinds. KNUT SCHMIDT-NIELSON, J.B. Duke Professor of Physiology in the Department of Zoology at Duke University, has studied animal responses to extreme environmental conditions. His major emphasis has been on life in hot deserts, and he is widely recognized for his studies of camels and other desert animals. His research has involved field studies in North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Dr. Schmidt-Nielson has written several books, which have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and he has published several hundred research papers. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society, the French Academie des Sciences, and several other academies. ALBERT E. SOLLOD, is associate professor and head of the international veterinary medicine section at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine. He is currently stationed in Niger as chief of party of the integrated livestock project and policy advisor in the Ministry of Animal Resources. He has consulted in 15 countries in Africa and Asia, and his research interests include interdisciplinary systems analysis, indigenous pastoral technologies, monitoring change in agricultural production systems, and monitoring and assessing drought impact. LEE M. TALBOT received his Ph.D. in geography and ecology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1963 and has worked on environmental and natural resource ecology and management in over 110 countries. At present he is visiting fellow at the World Resources Institute, Washington, D.C., and senior environmental consultant to the World Bank. He carried out pioneering research in Africa and elsewhere on the use of wild animals for food production. He has written more than 180 scientific and technical publications, including ten books and monographs. CLAIR E. TERRILL, animal scientist, collaborator, Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Beltsville, Maryland, received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri in 1936, served briefly at the Georgia Agricultural Experiment Station, and joined the USDA at the U.S. Sheep Experiment Station, Dubois, Idaho, in the same year. His research concerned genetics and reproduction of sheep, leading to national and international responsibility regarding research and production of sheep, goats, and other animals, with primary emphasis on increasing efficiency of production of meat, wool, and other products. CHRISTIAN M. WEMMER is assistant director for conservation and captive breeding programs at the National Zoological Park and is also in charge of the zoo's 3,100 acre Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal, Virginia. He is vice chairman of the IUCN Deer Specialist Group and a member of the Mustelid and Viverrid Specialist Group of the same organization. His interest in evolutionary and conservation biology has been motivated by frequent travel to South Asia and his role as scientific coordinator of the Smithsonian Nepal Terai Ecology Project. For the past 12 years he has coordinated the development of facilities and programs at the Conservation and Research Center and with Dr. R. Rudran has promoted conservation training and wildlife research in developing nations. He has published over 50 papers on various aspects of mammalian biology and conservation and has co-edited with Benjamin Beck one book on PFre David's deer. His edited volume "The Biology and Management of the Cervidae" was published by the Smithsonian Institution Press. DANNY C. WHARTON is associate curator, Animal Departments, at New York Zoological Park, Bronx, New York. He received a B.S. from the College of Idaho and an M.Sc. in 1975 from the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont. His Ph.D. in biology was earned at Fordham University. Dr. Wharton was a Peace Corps volunteer to Ecuador 1969-71 and a Fulbright scholar to Germany 1976-77. His research interests have been in the genetic and demographic management of small populations. He works on several committees including the IUCN/SSC Captive Breeding Specialist Group, Species Survival Plan Committee of the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums, and is species chairman for the North American Propagation Group for the Snow Leopard. CHARLES A. WOODS IS curator of mammals at the Florida State Museum and a professor of zoology at the University of Florida. He received his B.S. in zoology from the University of Denver and his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Massachusetts. He worked at the University of Vermont from 1970 to 1979 when he assumed his present position at the University of Florida. His principle research interests have been in the areas of mammalian ecology (Rodentia) and systematics and evolution and he is especially concerned with island biology. He has spent many years working in the West Indies on a variety of projects and has worked closely with the government of Haiti in establishing a plan for the National Parks of Haiti and in completing a biogeophysical inventory of the natural resources of Hispaniola. He is the ecological consultant for the Institut de Sauvegarde du Patrimoine National in Haiti. He is the author of a number of scientific articles on the fauna of the Antilles including a multivolume series on the fauna of the mountains of Haiti. THOMAS M. YUILL is associate dean for research and graduate training of the School of Veterinary Medicine, assistant director of the Agricultural Experiment Station, and professor of pathobiology and of veterinary science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his B.S. in wildlife management from Utah State University in 1959 and his Ph.D. jointly in veterinary science and wildlife ecology in 1964 from the University of Wisconsin. His principal research interests are animal health and diseases of wildlife, including those transmissible to domestic animals and to man. He worked in Thailand for two years and has had active research programs in Colombia for 17 years, and Costa Rica for 5 years. He has recently become involved in animal health and production development in the Gambia, West Africa. Dr. Yuill is an executive committee member and immediate past president of the Organization for Tropical Studies and currently serves as president of the Wildlife Disease Association. He completed a five-year term as Chairman of the U.S. Virus Diseases Panel of the U.S.-Japan Cooperative Biomedical Sciences Program.
