People

Brendan Reid / Principal Investigator

Brendan received his Masters in Conservation Biology from Columbia University and his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, followed by postdoctoral research at the AMNH, Michigan State, Rutgers, and UC Santa Cruz. He moved to Namur, Belgium (with his wife Patrice and two cats!) to begin a faculty position in 2025.

Mario Driesen / PhD student and teaching assistant

Mario started a 50% research/50% teaching appointment in the lab in January 2025. Mario completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and taught at KU Leuven before starting at UNamur. He is interested in herpetological conservation and genetics, and he is planning to work on the genomics of captive and wild populations of the Borneo Earless Monitor (Lanthanotus borneensis) for his dissertation research.