Dr. Viorel Popescu

Viorel Popescu is a lecturer and director of the M.S. in Biodiversity Data Analytics program at Columbia University School of Professional Studies and the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology (The BEAST Lab). The research in his group is driven by the urgent need for rapid, effective strategies to address biodiversity loss, with a focus on understanding how biodiversity responds to human activities in order to inform conservation strategies.

Popescu’s research relies on advanced statistical methods to measure biodiversity and trends in terrestrial and freshwater species. He works with management agencies, NGOs, industry, governments and other parties with vested interests in biodiversity conservation to provide concrete and applied solutions to real-world issues, such as overexploitation of wildlife species, tradeoffs between renewable energy and biodiversity or endangered species recovery across many jurisdictions (United States, Canada, Eastern Europe, China, Peru). He has served as the science advisor for several EU-funded biodiversity conservation projects in Eastern Europe and as a consultant for public utility companies and governments in British Columbia and Romania on biodiversity-friendly renewable energy sitting. Current projects include large mammal ecology in Romania, eastern hellbender conservation in Pennsylvania and biodiversity monitoring in the Peruvian Amazon and western China.

Popescu has published more than 75 scientific papers, including in the journals Science, Nature Communications, and Ecology Letters, and co-authored a foundational conservation biology textbook. He has a passion for teaching conservation and quantitative ecology courses and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students. A recipient of the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship (2012–2014), Popescu is also a life member of the Society for Conservation Biology and a member of both the IUCN Bear Specialist Group and The Wildlife Society.