Luis A. Solórzano, Ph.D.Program Officer, Environmental Science
Luis A. Solórzano is the program officer for environmental science at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Previously, Luis served as the initiative lead for the Andes-Amazon Initiative.
A native from Colombia, Luis’ scientific career began with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama studying the evolution and ecology of marine organisms in the Caribbean and western Pacific. At Princeton University he did landscape-level research on the ecology of sustainable biomass plantations for energy generation in northeast Brazil and modeling the large-scale geographic patterns of forest and savanna vegetation in eastern South America. Working with the Woods Hole Research Center, he studied the governing principles of functional interactions between vegetation, climate and soils in eastern Amazon and was member of the Amazon-Scenarios modeling and simulation group.
Before joining the Foundation Luis directed the science unit of the Andean Center for Biodiversity Conservation at Conservation International where he designed and set out a program to develop and employ spatial modeling and monitoring tools for strategic planning and implementation of field conservation actions.
Luis holds degrees in Biology from the National University of Colombia and M.A in Evolutionary Biology and Ph.D. in Ecology from Princeton University.