Staff

As Director of Science and Conservation for the National Tropical Botanical Garden, Tiffany oversees the strategic development of science and conservation at the Juliet Rice Wichman Botanical Research Center (BRC) at NTBG’s headquarters on Kauai. Tiffany came to NTBG in 2024 from a position as Professor and Head of Department of Species Interaction Ecology in Leipzig, Germany where she continues to have an affiliation. Following her PhD from the University of Pittsburgh, Tiffany held positions and adjunct appointments at the University of Florida, the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, Washington University in St. Louis, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and Chicago Botanic Garden. Tiffany is passionate about ecological research and new technologies that can be directly applied to conservation and restoration of plant biodiversity.

Contact: tknight@ntbg.org

As Executive Assistant Katie supports the Director, oversees the Botanical Research Center, serves as a point of contact for internal and external stakeholders, visitors and students, and manages higher level and ad hoc projects and accounting. Katie joined NTBG in 2022 bringing 12 years of experience as Executive Assistant to the Head of Island School.

Contact: kmagoun@ntbg.org

Dr. David Lorence occupies the B. Evans Chair of Botany and came to the National Tropical Botanical Garden in 1987. Research specialties are systematic studies of tropical plants, floristics, and invasive plant species. His systematic research focuses on Pacific and neotropical members of the large and diverse Rubiaceae family, which includes coffee, quinine, and gardenias. He also studies Pacific island pteridophytes and the Monimiaceae family of the Malagasy region. David leads NTBG’s publication of regional Pacific Floras, including publication of the Flora of Marquesas Islands in 2020 and Flora of Samoa in 2022. He currently leads the work for a Flora of Micronesia.

Contact: dlorence@ntbg.org
Google Scholar Profile

Tim is Curator of the Herbarium (PTBG) at the National Tropical Botanical Garden. He has been working at NTBG since 1981. In addition to managing the herbarium he has also participated in fieldwork in Hawaiʻi, Samoa, Tonga, Niue, the Cook Islands, Kosrae, Pohnpei, Palau, Australia, New Caledonia, and Ecuador, and currently has a particular interest in contributing to understudied bryophytes.

Contact: tflynn@ntbg.org

In her dual position as Conservation Scientist and Curator of Living Collections of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, Seana leads the organization’s efforts to implement the Hawaiʻi Strategy for Plant Conservation and oversees the conservation and development of NTBG’s living collections, working closely with the Plant Records Manager to ensure well documented and curated collections. She earned a M.S. in Botany from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2015 and a Ph.D. from the University of Copenhagen in 2023 focused on science-based conservation management of threatened Hawaiian plants.

Contact: swalsh@ntbg.org
Google Scholar Profile
Twitter: @Walsh_Seana

As Plant Records Manager for the National Tropical Botanical Garden since 2017, Kevin Houck oversees the gardens Plant Records Office and work closely with the Curator of Living Collections to ensure the gardens collections are well documented and curated. Kevin holds a BSc from University of Colorado, majoring in Psychology and Environmental, Population and Organismic Biology, and is currently undertaking a Master of Science degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Hawaii.

Contact: plantrecords@ntbg.org

Ken’s research focuses on the study and conservation of Pacific Island floras. His essential responsibilities include organizing and conducting botanical field surveys with a specialty in accessing rough terrain habitats. Other aspects of his research include: mapping the distribution and abundance of rare Pacific island plants (phytogeography); collecting herbarium specimens for scientific study, collecting seeds, spores, and cuttings for conservation, and DNA material for genetic sequencing; publishing conservation status data and new species descriptions; and contributing to conservation biology research and educational outreach through national and international scientific collaboration.

Contact: kwood@ntbg.org
ResearchGate Profile

As Scientific Curator of Seed Conservation, Dustin manages NTBG’s Seed Bank and Laboratory and specialize in ex situ seed conservation biology with an emphasis on seed and pollen storage behavior, seed longevity and aging kinetics, seed borne pathogen abatement, and seed dormancy and dormancy alleviation of native Hawaiian plant species of conservation importance. His research aims to understand how seeds respond to desiccation and subfreezing temperatures, identifying regeneration intervals, and determining optimal seed propagation techniques. Dustin holds an MSc in Plant Biology and Conservation from Arizona State University and a PhD degree from 2023 from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, focused on seed conservation biology in the Hawaiian flora.

Contact: dwolkis@ntbg.org
Google Scholar Profile

Ben is a GIS and drone specialist working on the application of cutting-edge technology in plant conservation. He has a PhD from the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen in Botany and MSc degree in GIS (Geographic Information System) from Penn State University. At NTBG he is responsible for management of organization-wide phytogeography data and GIS modeling, contributing data to NTBGs research and conservation work, as well as to over 400 NTBG led IUCN Red List assessments. Ben leads NTBGʻs innovative drone program which helps botanists globally with the survey of hard to access terrain. His work has had a significant impact on the conservation of a number of critically endangered plants and has led to the discovery of several new species.

Contact: bnyberg@ntbg.org
Google Scholar Profile
Twitter: @BenBotanical

Michael “Mike” Opgenorth has been the Director of NTBG’s Kahanu Garden and Preserve in Hāna, Maui, since 2015. Mike earned his undergraduate degree in Business Management with a minor in Plant Production/Plant Management from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. He later achieved his Ph.D. in Horticultural Science from the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen. Mike’s research focuses on plants of the Pacific, particularly rare and culturally significant species. Using an interdisciplinary approach, his work investigates documentation of plant diversity, human relationships to plants, and their cultivation.

Contact: mopgenorth@ntbg.org

A small farmer, born and raised on Kauaʻi, Noel Dickinson is passionate about rural food security and sustainable, diversified agriculture as a means of achieving it. As Coordinator for the Breadfruit Institute, Noel Dickinson is responsible for institute operations, conservation, horticulture, research, and outreach activities including the establishment and management of the Regenerative Organic Breadfruit Agroforestry (ROBA) demonstration at McBryde Garden. Noel attended the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo where she earned a BS in Horticulture with specialization in Tropical Plant Science and Agroecology, as well as Plant Tissue Culture certification. In addition to her responsibilities as the institute’s Coordinator, Noel is currently pursuing a PhD from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, focusing on the improvement of conservation, curation, and management of collections of heritage crops and their wild relatives within botanical gardens -specifically Artocarpus.

Contact: ndickinson@ntbg.org

As NTBG’s Tropical Crop Diversity Scientist in the Breadfruit Institute, Julia participates in integrating research, conservation, and extension programs to support and improve the conservation and use of breadfruit in the Pacific Islands and beyond for sustainable agriculture and food security. A primary focus is the continued strategic development and conservation of the breadfruit collection as a globally significant plant genetic resource for food and agriculture following international best practices for ex situ crop conservation collections. Julia holds a PhD from the National Institute of Amazon Research, Brazil, focused on Resilience of floodplain Amazonian agroecosystems in the context of climate change, which included a 9-month research stay at the University of Hawaii. She also holds MSc and BSc degrees in ethnoecology and ethnobotany from the Federal University of Santa Catarina, UFSC, Brazil.

Contact: javila@ntbg.org
Google Scholar Profile

Amanda is the Science and Conservation Assistant at the National Tropical Botanical Garden. She has contributed to a range of projects within the herbarium, including her role as a technician for the Marquesas Flora website—a collaborative project between NTBG and the Smithsonian Institution— and as an assistant for the herbarium collections as part of joint National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to digitize regional Pacific herbaria. Currently, she is contributing to efforts to digitize NTBG’s bryophyte and lichen collections and is working with the herbarium curator to develop a field guide to the common mosses of the Hawaiian Islands. She holds an MS in Botany from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Contact: avernon@ntbg.org

Fawcett is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the National Tropical Botanical Garden, where she studies the diversity and evolution of the native Hawaiian flora, with ongoing projects focused on Pritchardia, Geniostoma, Lysimachia, the Hawaiian Silversword lineage and ferns.

She is also a Research Botanist at the University and Jepson Herbaria at UC Berkeley and a National Geographic Explorer.  Research and fieldwork has taken her to Latin America and the Pacific, recently collecting ferns and documenting biodiversity in Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Fiji. Her doctoral research at the University of Vermont was focused on the evolution of ferns, resulting in a phylogenomic study and taxonomic revision of the Thelypteridaceae.

She grew up in Petoskey, Michigan, and graduated from the University of Michigan with a BFA and BGS in 2005, and from Northern Michigan University with an MS in 2012. Her masters research focused on the flora and ecology of a neotropical savanna in the Caribbean of Honduras, and she is presently on faculty at the University of Michigan Biological Station, where she teaches botany and botanical illustration.

Contact: sfawcett@ntbg.org

Jena supports the conservation of Hawaiʻi’s rare and endangered flora as Seed Bank and Laboratory Technician.  She helps steward a vital collection of over 18 million seeds, conducting seed, pollen, and fern spore research to ensure these collections remain viable for restoration efforts. She completed her Master’s of Science in Environmental Horticulture at the University of Florida in 2023, where she collaborated with small-scale farmers to research regional seed production practices and post-harvest drying treatments in culturally important crop and ecologically significant wild species. Jena is inspired by the role seeds play in preserving both biodiversity and the stories of the landscapes they come from.

Contact: josmani@ntbg.org