Bio – Amy Welsh

A winding path brought me to the field of conservation genetics and I have always enjoyed the journey. I grew up in Baltimore, MD and received my B.S. degree in Zoology and Psychology from the University of Maryland-College Park (1996). I then worked at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research looking at the effects of sleep deprivation on performance (1996-1999). I received my Masters of Forensic Science degree from The George Washington University (1999) and then worked at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (1999-2001), where I was introduced to genetics and its important applications. Ecology and zoology remained an important passion and I moved out west to pursue my Ph.D. in Ecology at UC-Davis (2006). The focus of my dissertation was the population genetics of lake sturgeon. I then moved to the shore of Lake Ontario and was an assistant professor at SUNY-Oswego (2006-2011). The journey has now brought me to wild and wonderful West Virginia, where I continue research on the genetics of fish and wildlife populations.