Dr. Thomas L. Crisman is a Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at University of South Florida in Tampa. He received his PhD in Zoology (limnology) from Indiana University and after a postdoctoral period at University of Minnesota, joined the faculty of the Department of Environmental Engineering Sciences at University of Florida, where he was professor for 30 years and Director of the Howard T. Odum Center for Wetlands. Dr. Crisman has been on the faculty of University of South Florida for 8 years. He was a Fulbright scholar in Greece and Turkey and currently serves on the boards of the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation and the Interbalkan Environment Center (Greece). Dr. Crisman’s research centers on the ecology, management, restoration and conservation of freshwater wetlands, lakes and rivers globally, and he has extensive experience in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He currently is working on interdisciplinary approaches to ecohydrology and ecohealth, ecological impacts of urbanization, and climate change. In Costa Rica, Dr. Crisman’s team is working at the watershed scale in detailed comparisons of ecological and human health indices as water management tools with the ultimate goal of integrating humans within the ecology of the area. His ecohydrological research includes the long term response of wetlands to over extraction of ground water for metropolitan Tampa, expansion of reed beds in a northern Greek lake as it has undergone profound water level reduction related to agricultural activities and transboundary management of watersheds in the Balkans. For the past seven years, Dr. Crisman has been part of a USF team conducting a series of workshops on the topic of water security in Afghanistan and Central Asia.