Eli Greenbaum

Eli Greenbaum is a National Geographic explorer and professor of evolutionary genetics at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), where he teaches undergraduate and graduate-level courses in Genetics, Herpetology, and Biodiversity. He also serves as Director of the UTEP Biodiversity Collections, which are the university's plant and animal natural history collections. Greenbaum is a scientific advisory board member of The Reptile Database, Editorial Advisory Board Member for African Journal of Herpetology, and a member of the IUCN SSC Chameleon Specialist Group.

Greenbaum began working as a biodiversity scientist in Africa in 2001 with two expeditions to Mali and Guinea. As a postdoctoral research fellow at Villanova University in 2006, he worked with professor Aaron Bauer (world authority on geckos) on expeditions to South Africa and the Seychelles. Since 2007, he has led ten expeditions to Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he has worked with an all-Congolese team of herpetologists to survey the amphibian and reptile biodiversity of Central Africa. Other recent Greenbaum expeditions conducted similar work in Burundi and Uganda. To date, Greenbaum and colleagues have described 12 new species of frogs and 11 new species of reptiles from Central Africa, including four new species of montane chameleons that are threatened with extinction. Dozens more new species to science have been identified from analyses of DNA sequence data, and future publications are planned to officially describe them. Several additional scientific studies have been published from this work, including analyses of the genetic relationships among these animals, and conservation assessments that have been used to bolster efforts to protect endangered species and ecosystems in Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Greenbaum has published over one hundred articles in refereed science journals, which have been cited over 4,500 times. His work has been covered in CNN, Newsweek, NBC News, National Geographic Daily News, Africa Geographic Magazine, Reptiles Magazine, Smithsonian.com, Nature.com, and The Huffington Post. His book Emerald Labyrinth: A Scientist's Adventures in the Jungles of the Congo (ForeEdge, University Press of New England) was honored as one of the Top 10 Biology Books of 2017 by Forbes Magazine.

Education

• Ph.D. Ecology, Evolution, Systematics, and Population Biology The University of Kansas
• M.S. Biology / Biological Sciences University of Louisiana at Monroe
• B.S. Biological and Biomedical Sciences Binghamton University

Companies

• Director Of Biodiversity Collections The University of Texas at El Paso (2011)
• Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences The University of Texas at El Paso (2008)
• Postdoctoral Research Fellow Villanova University (2006 — 2008)
• Curatorial Assistant, Natural History Museum & Biodiversity Research Center The University of Kansas (1999 — 2001)