Rebecca Lewison is a conservation ecologist and a Professor at San Diego State University. She also serves as Director for the Institute for Ecological Management and Monitoring, a multi-disciplinary research institute at SDSU. Dr. Lewison received her Bachelor's degree from Vassar College and went on to complete her doctorate in Ecology at the University of California, Davis. Using innovative field, quantitative and lab-based approaches, her research focuses on vulnerable wildlife populations that live in both terrestrial and aquatic environments and face pressing conservation issues, e.g. fragmentation, habitat loss, harvest and incidental mortality, disease, and other disturbances. Over the past decade, she has been spearheading integrative research in conservation ecology, policy, and resource use, with expertise and experience across a wide taxonomic range of organisms. Dr. Lewison has served as a leader of several research initiatives designed to develop new tools and methodological approaches to understand the magnitude and extent, of population-level and landscape level effects of human-mediated activities.