I am a postdoctoral fellow with Gretchen Daily and Paul Ehrlich at the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University. My research has two major components: countryside biogeography and conservation finance.

Countryside biogeography is the study of the distribution of biodiversity across human-dominated landscapes. I hope to gain a better understanding of how much diversity will persist under different configurations of land-uses.

Conservation finance is the study of the funding for environmental protection. I hope to contribute to an understanding of the use of markets for conservation purposes, and the optimal structure in the face of uncertainty in underlying ecosystems and socioeconomic systems.

Recently, I was a Ph.D. student under Simon Levin at Princeton University, where my thesis was an attempt to cross scales and disciplines in the study of the process of diversification. To this end, I developed microevolutionary models of the processes of speciation, introgression, and extinction. Simultaneously, Brian Moore and I created macroevolutionry methods to study the resulting patterns, and implemented those methods in computer programs. I was also a policy fellow, doing ethics research under Peter Singer.

My research has convinced me of the necessity for us all to become environmental advocates and activists. At Princeton, I coordinated a group called Greening Princeton. Here at Stanford, I'm working with Science in Policy, trying to make science a more consistent component of national policy. I am now also a fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program.

Contact Details:
Center for Conservation Biology
Department of Biological Sciences
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-5020
USA

Email: kaichan@stanford.edu
Tel: 650.725.1783
Fax: 650.723.5920