Operation Wallacea
Professor David Smith is a distinguished marine biologist with extensive experience in both academia and industry. Currently serving as the Senior Director of Mars Sustainable Solutions and Chief Marine Science Officer at Mars Inc. since August 2019, Professor Smith also holds multiple leadership roles at the University of Essex, including Director of the Tropical Marine Biology MSc program and Director of the Coral Reef Research Unit, where oversight of coral reef research occurs in various international locations, particularly Indonesia and the Seychelles. Additionally, as a Senior Marine Biologist with Operation Wallacea since January 1998, Professor Smith directs marine research at the Indonesia Marine Research Facility within Wakatobi Marine National Park. Educationally, Professor Smith earned a BSc in Marine Zoology from Queen Mary University of London between 1994 and 1997.
Operation Wallacea
Operation Wallacea is a series of biological and social science expedition projects that operate in remote locations across the world. These expeditions are designed with specific wildlife conservation aims in mind - from identifying areas needing protection, through to implementing and assessing conservation management programmes. Large teams of university academics, who are specialists in various aspects of biodiversity or social and economic studies, are concentrated at the target study sites. Research Assistants and dissertation students joining the surveys have the option of customising their own itinerary from a range of training and science options. The surveys result in a large number of publications in peer-reviewed journals each year, have resulted in 30 vertebrate species new to science being discovered, 4 'extinct' species being re-discovered and $2 million levered from funding agencies to set up best practice management examples at the study sites. These large survey teams of academics and volunteers that are funded independently of normal academic sources have enabled large temporal and spatial biodiversity and socio-economic data sets to be produced, and provide information to help with organising effective conservation management programmes.