Sr. Fellow and Director, Centre for Policy Design
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Abi T Vanak is the Director of the Centre for Policy Design at ATREE. He’s an Ecologist by disciplinary training and has a Ph.D. in Wildlife Science from the University of Missouri, USA. He is a highly published author, with over a 100 papers, book chapters and articles on a diverse range of topics, including carnivore ecology, human-wildlife coexistence, savanna ecosystems, disease ecology, OneHealth and conservation policy. He works closely on the Science-Policy-Practice interface in ATREE’s key areas of expertise in land conservation and restoration, livelihoods and human well-being.
As a Senior Fellow at the SNM Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation, his broad research interests are in animal movement ecology, disease ecology, OneHealth, savanna ecosystems, invasive species (both plant and animal) and wildlife in human-dominated systems.Much of his current work focuses on the outcome of interactions between species at the interface of humans, domestic animals and wildlife in semi-arid savannas and agro-ecosystems. Abi’s interests in OneHealth systems and disease ecology include the dynamics of rabies transmission in multi-host systems and in understanding the role of small and medium mammals as tick hosts in the transmission dynamics of Kyasanur forest disease.
He is or has served as an editor in the top international journals in the field of conservation, including Animal Conservation, Conservation Biology, PlosONE, Endangered species research and Current Science. He has also served on the Board of the Society for Conservation Biology-Asia Chapter. He has received several prestigious fellowships, including the National Environment Science Fellowship from the MoEFCC and the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance Clinical and Public Health Fellowship. He was also the lead author of the OneHealth and Zoonoses program of the Proposed National Mission on Biodiversity and Human-Well being.
