President's Professor of Biology and Executive Director, Center for Urban Resilience
Loyola Marymount University
Eric Strauss serves as President's Professor of Biology at Loyola Marymount University and Executive Director of the Center for Urban Resilience (CURes). With collaborative research specialties in animal behavior, endangered species management, urban ecosystems, and science education, Eric has extended the model for faculty scholarship by co-founding the Urban Ecology Institute in Boston while he served as a faculty member at Boston College and CURes in LA, both of which provide educational, research, and restoration programs to underserved neighborhoods and their residents.
In addition, Eric is the founding editor of a web-based peer-reviewed journal, Cities and the Environment, which is funded in part by the USDA Forest Service. His research includes collaborative long-term studies of coyotes, white-tailed deer, crows, turtles, and other vertebrates, with a specialty in understanding wildlife in urban areas and the appropriate management responses to wildlife problems and zoonotic disease. His work also includes investigating the role of green space and urban forests in supporting healthy neighborhoods and how those features can be used to improve science education and restorative justice.
Eric has co-written multi-media textbooks in biology and urban ecology as well as hosting multiple video series on the life sciences and ecology. He received his B.S. in mass communication from Emerson College and his Ph.D. in biology from Tufts University.