KU News Release

LAWRENCE — The Global Biodiversity Information Facility, representing 51 countries and 42 international organizations, has elected Leonard Krishtalka, director of the Biodiversity Institute at the University of Kansas, as chair of its science committee and a member of its executive committee.

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility, headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, provides free and open access to biodiversity data worldwide via the Internet — data on millions of museum specimens and field observations of plants and animals in nature — for the benefit of science and society. The organization also provides computational tools and training to institutions in member nations in analyzing the biodiversity data to inform environmental policy.

Krishtalka, who is also a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, has been the director of the Biodiversity Institute since 1995.