Dennis P. Waters and Irwin M. Brodo

Dennis Waters is a lichenologist from Lawrence Township, NJ, who has been intrigued by lichens since childhood. He decided to pursue their serious study following the publication of Dr. Irwin M. Brodo’s Lichens of North America in 2001. A retired Internet publisher, Dr. Waters spends much of his spare time cataloging the lichens of central New Jersey, leading local lichen workshops, and traveling around eastern North America on organized forays to study lichen ecology. He received his Ph.D. in advanced technology from the Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Science at Binghamton University.

Irwin Brodo was a Research Lichenologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature for 35 years, and was the Chief of the Botany Division for over eight. A native of New York City, he received a B.S. from City College in New York, an M.S. in biology from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in botany from Michigan State University. He has published over 90 research papers, mainly in the fields of lichen taxonomy and ecology, including several monographs, numerous papers on British Columbia lichens, and an identification guidebook on the lichens of the Ottawa Region, now in its second edition. Although interested in lichens of all kinds, he mainly focuses on the less conspicuous crustose species.