Adam Leache is a Professor of Biology at the University of Washington and Curator of Herpetology and Genetic Resources at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.  He is also a National Institutes of Health Genome Training Grant Faculty Member through the Genome Sciences Department at the University of Washington. He is a former member of the McNair Scholars Program, a U.S. Federal TRIO program run by the US Department of Education. He is the recipient of a University of Washington Distinguished Teaching Award, and the Ernst Mayr Award from the Society of Systematic Biologists.  He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in the field of Integrative Biology where he conducted biodiversity research in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.  He transitioned to computational work as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Davis where he conducted simulation studies to compare the performance of different model-based approaches to estimate phylogenetic histories using Bayesian statistical techniques. These computer simulation studies provide important guidelines for study design and identify important avenues for innovative research and methods development. His current work focuses on phylogenetics, systematics, phylogeography, and species delimitation. Natural populations of reptiles and amphibians are the focal species of interest, and he conduct extensive fieldwork to study animals in the wild. His fieldwork to remote and understudied regions has resulted in the discovery and scientific descriptions of new species.  Species discovery is a renaissance topic in biology, and his lab is at the forefront of developing and employing new genomic tools and technologies for studying populations and species. He uses a wide variety of genomic tools, which creates natural research intersections with computational biology and bioinformatics.

During his Fulbright visit to Greece, he will collaborate with experts in the fields of computer science and biology to investigate the dispersal routes animals used to diversify and spread across Africa, Asia, and Europe using the Aegean Islands as stepping-stones. His primary host institution is the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas in the Institute of Computer Science where he will work with global leader in the development of computer science and programming solutions for the analysis of genetic data.  Additional host institutions include the Hellenic Center for Marine Research and the Natural History Museum of Crete.