Our plenary speakers for the AOS 2026 meeting include two invited speakers and the three winners of the 2026 AOS Early Professional Awards. These speakers highlight modern, cutting-edge approaches to ornithological science and the conservation of birds, and also showcase the diversity of the people doing this important work as well as the birds that they study.
Cliquez sur le lien pour accéder au contenu ci-dessous :
Plénières invitées
Lyra Brennan, M.S.
Director, Mass Audubon Coastal Waterbird Program
“Enduring commitment and unprecedented success: the conservation of beach-nesting birds in Massachusetts“
For four decades, Mass Audubon’s Coastal Waterbird Program (CWP) has monitored and protected Piping Plovers (Charadrius melodus), Least Terns (Sterna antillarum), and American Oystercatchers (Haematopus palliatus), achieving significant success in the restoration of these threatened populations. CWP’s primary objectives are to 1) protect and monitor critical coastal bird populations and habitats, 2) build conservation capacity in local communities through training and outreach, 3) advocate for the protection of coastal ecosystems by working in cooperation with state and federal agencies and private and public landowners, and 4) conduct management research to develop and disseminate best practices. CWP has been instrumental in achieving significant population increases in target populations, but program data also illustrates the continued vulnerability of beach-nesting birds in the face of climate change, human disturbance, and habitat loss.
Lyra Brennan has been leading efforts for waterbird conservation, management and research in Massachusetts for twelve years. Her tenure with the CWP) has enabled her to cultivate a deep connection with on-the-ground protection efforts, statewide coastal ecosystems, and conservation partners along the Atlantic Flyway. Lyra spearheaded the programs’ most significant habitat restoration projects over the last eight years and remains an outspoken advocate for best management practices in coastal environments. Lyra accepted the prestigious Thomas Keesee Jr. Conservation award from National Audubon on behalf of CWP in October of 2023; the award recognizes the achievements of the program in C. melodus conservation. Lyra is a member of the Roseate Tern Recovery Working Group (FWS) the American Oystercatcher Working Group (National Audubon), and recently published an article on S. antillarum in Bird Observer. She has an M.S. in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont’s (UVM) Field Naturalist and Ecological Planning Program focused on rare species in wetland habitats and an undergraduate degree from New York University. Lyra was also awarded the UVM Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award in the fields of Natural Resources, Nature and Culture, and Environmental Studies. Her skills, experience, and abiding belief in community-based conservation are instrumental in achieving conservation success for beach nesting birds.
Fun Fact: Lyra is a competitive powerlifter!
Patty Rodriguez Brennan, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, Mount Holyoke College
“Science Lessons from the Sex life of Birds“
Tinamous are secretive and shy birds, and Dr. Brennan’s Ph.D. studying their mating system was difficult. To her surprise, she found that the male did not sire many chicks in his nest, contradicting the Bateman-Trivers paradigm of male parental care. From this lesson on reconciling unexpected results with the literature, she went on to study genitalia in waterfowl as a post-doc, when she asked a question that had not been asked: If the penis is so big and weird, what does the vagina look like? She found that waterfowl have convoluted vaginas that coevolve with the penis in a sexually antagonistic race over forced copulations. She continued to look for unexplored areas in genital studies, and discovered that the penis of waterfowl shows evidence of phenotypic plasticity. While more recently she has expanded her research to other vertebrates, she is currently studying the avian clitoris, and still trying to understand why female biology continues to be so neglected in research.
Patty Brennan, Ph.D., studied Marine Biology in her native Colombia, and came to the USA to pursue a PhD in Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University where she began her studies of tinamou mating systems, and realized some birds have penises. She was awarded an NSF post-doctoral proposal to study bird genitalia, and she worked at Yale University, and at University of Sheffield. During this time she discovered that some female waterfowl have convoluted vaginas that coevolve with the penis due to sexual conflict, and she spent the next few years learning about genital morphology, phenotypic plasticity in genitalia, and post-copulatory sexual selection. She worked as a Research professor at UMass Amherst conducting research on bird and bat genitalia, and then moved on to Mount Holyoke College, a gender inclusive college, where she has been since 2015 studying genital evolution and co-evolution in many vertebrates including sharks, snakes, dolphins, alpacas and of course, birds. Her current research interests emphasize the study of the vagina and clitoris, which have been neglected by science. Her work has appeared multiple times in major press outlets in print and online. She has received multiple grants to conduct her work, has published dozens of papers, and has an extensive outreach program. Dr. Brennan is a proud fellow of the AOU, the ABS and AAAS.
Fun Fact: Patty lives on a beautiful diversified organic working farm!
Follow Dr. Brennan’s research.
AOS 2026 Early Professional Award Winner Plenaries
Lauréats du prix James G. Cooper pour les jeunes professionnels
Devon DeRaad, Ph.D.
La Kretz Center for Conservation Science Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Los Angeles
“Understanding the evolutionary forces governing global biodiversity accumulation”
Decades of theory has generated an elegant conceptual understanding of how speciation creates new biodiversity. Yet, we still don’t understand the complex interplay between evolutionary mechanisms that occurs throughout the speciation process under natural conditions. My research program bridges this gap between theory and nature, to increase our understanding of how biodiversity is generated and maintained across the globe.
Devon DeRaad, Ph.D., is a La Kretz Center for Conservation Science Postdoctoral Fellow, mentored by Stepfanie Aguillon, Ph.D., at the University of California, Los Angeles. As a researcher, DeRaad combines genomics with specimen and field-based investigations to increase our collective understanding of how novel biodiversity is generated. DeRaad has published a myriad of scientific papers investigating the speciation process in avian systems across the globe, from the Solomon Islands to the North American Great Plains, and takes pride in doing collaborative, rigorous, and reproducible science. He earned his B.A. from Occidental College in 2017, where he credits undergraduate research experience at the Moore Laboratory of Zoology for the opportunity to fall in love with museum ornithology and the process of scientific research. He then went on to complete his Ph.D. in 2024, mentored by Rob Moyle, Ph.D., while working in the University of Kansas Natural History Museum. As a graduate student, DeRaad received a University of Kansas Madison and Lila Self Graduate Fellowship, funding the majority of his graduate studies. DeRaad was previously awarded an AOS Student Research Award in 2021, and AOS Travel Grants in 2017, 2023, and 2025 to support his attendance at past AOS meetings.
Fengyi Guo, Ph.D.
Rose Postdoctoral Fellow, Cornell Atkinson Postdoctoral Fellow in Sustainability, Cornell University
"Stopover ecology and conservation of migratory landbirds in North America"
Migratory landbirds are experiencing dramatic population declines in North America, but little is known about the important habitats they use as stopover sites during migration. My research leverages the Next Generation Weather Radar (NEXRAD) system to monitor the continental-scale movement patterns and stopover distributions of migratory landbirds across the contiguous United States. In this talk, I will present my work on identifying critical stopover hotspots and key habitats for migratory landbirds, and assess how they cope with migration barriers with limited stopover sites. I will also discuss current projects mapping long-term population trends of migratory landbirds during stopover and assessing land-use change impacts. Finally, I will highlight ongoing collaboration with USDA-NRCS on a new conservation framework that translates these insights about stopover ecology into evidence-based conservation of migratory landbirds.
Fengyi Guo (Freda), Ph.D., is a Rose Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and Cornell Atkinson Postdoctoral Fellow in Sustainability. She is a conservation biologist committed to solutions-oriented research. Combining data-intensive radar remote sensing and on-the-ground field surveys, her research focuses on identifying stopover hotspots and key habitats for migratory landbirds during the en-route period, thus contributing to the full annual cycle conservation of migratory birds. Her current work examines the long-term population trends of migratory landbirds during stopover in the contiguous United States, quantifying impacts of past land-use changes and assessing effectiveness of conservation measures. Guo collaborates with USDA–Natural Resources Conservation Service to develop conservation recommendations for protecting and restoring important stopover habitats for migratory landbirds in the eastern United States. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2024; and her M.Phil. in 2018 and B.Sc. in 2016, both from The University of Hong Kong. Her work has been covered by National Public Radio (NPR) and Audubon magazine, and also recognized by an early career award from the International Radar Aeroecology Conference.
Fun Fact: Freda is both a cat lover and bird lover.
Lauréat du prix Ned K. Johnson Early Investigator Award
Olivia M. Smith, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Michigan State University
“Farming with the flock: Redesigning agricultural systems for people and nature“
Talk description coming soon!
Olivia M. Smith, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at Michigan State University, where she leads the Smith BIRDS Lab. Her research focuses on how working landscapes can be managed to support both people and nature. Taking an ecosystem services perspective, her work examines how birds contribute to ecosystem services such as pest control while addressing potential disservices, particularly food safety risks. Using large-scale observational studies, field experiments, and interdisciplinary approaches, she develops practical, incentive-based conservation strategies for working lands. Smith earned a B.S. from Siena Heights University in 2013, where she was also a McNair Scholar. She then went on to earn her M.S. from The Ohio State University in 2015, and a Ph.D. in biology from Washington State University in 2019. Smith has received competitive fellowships including a USDA Pre-Doctoral Fellowship, USDA Postdoctoral Fellowship, and Michigan State University Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship in Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior. She has published 40 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, including first-authored manuscripts in PNAS, Nature Ecology & Evolution, Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Journal of Applied Ecology, and more. She has co-authored articles in leading journals such as La science, Global Change Biologyet One Earth. She also served as an associate editor for the AOS journal Applications ornithologiques from 2021–2024. Her research has previously been recognized through honors such as the Frontiers Planet Prize, and she received AOS Travel Grants in 2017, 2018, and 2020.
French 
English 
Spanish