Robert Edwards (Class of 1999) appointed as the Assistant Curator of Environment at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History

Robert “Bort” Edwards (Class of 1999), who most recently worked at Yale University on a project to map all known species on earth, will be tasked with developing programs to foster a better understanding of environmental change locally and globally at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. As Assistant Curator of Environment Robert’s role will be to provide more depth and relevance to its research as the museum embarks on the second century of its existence.

“I’m really interested in what drives where things grow how the environment sort of shapes the distribution of plants,” Robert said, whether that’s rainfall, the chemistry of the soil or on which side of a mountain something is found.

Robert was very excited to learn more about the 66 natural preserves across northern Ohio that the museum either owns or manages to form the basis of his research. Many of those areas, which take up almost 12,000 acres, contain rare species and represent a “living laboratory” to be studied, said Gavin Svenson, director of research and collections at the museum.

Although Robert’s expertise is in plants, he hopes to develop models that show how both plants and animals are responding to their environments to help predict what might happen in the future, especially as a result of climate change.

Robert shared that part of his job will be to make the museum’s research accessible to the public in a variety of ways.

“We have to move beyond people just looking at physical specimens,” Robert said, as he envisions providing virtual hikes and tours for the public.

Robert Edwards (Class of 1999) graduated from the Australian National University and has a doctoral degree in phylogenetics and biogeography from the University of Queensland.

He’s been in the United States for about seven years. He studied fruit flies under a microscope at the University of Rochester as a post-doctoral researcher and then became a post-doctoral associate at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., which is where he fell in love with the idea or working for a museum.

Most recently, he spent more than a year at Yale as an associate research scientist in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology working on the “Map of Life” initiative, the goal of which is to document the distribution of all species of plants and animals on earth.