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Fish Passage Conference

Dating back to 2011, the annual Fish Passage Conference has brought together experts, managers, stakehold­ers and companies from around the world with concurrent sessions in engineering, biology, and management and social issues.  Target audiences are: engineers, ecologists, biologists, managers, practitioners, NGOs, private companies, consultants, students and policy and deci­sion makers. This event aims at increasing research and profes­sional networking and is an ex­cellent opportunity to connect future partners.

Interested in hosting fish passage 2023 or 2024?

Meet the Advisory Board

Luiz is a senior scientist at the Institute for Environmental Engineering, ETH-Zürich, Switzerland, working in the field of ecohydraulics and freshwater fish ecology. For over 17 years he has been involved in research focused on assessing the effects of barriers and flow alteration on freshwater ecosystems, particularly on fish species. Luiz has been active in fish passage research for over a decade now. He has led and collaborated with studies in the Southern and Northern hemispheres on a broad range of topics, including upstream and downstream fish passage, fish migration, dispersal of early life-stages of fish, laboratory-based (hydraulic flume) studies, and habitat mapping and modeling. Throughout his career, Luiz has worked closely with the hydropower industry globally, to contribute to the development of management plans and guidelines to minimize the impacts of dams on fish and fisheries.

Lisiane is a Brazilian biologist and technical director of Neotropical Environmental Consulting Company. Her work and research interests in the last 20 years are focus on the investigation of fish movements in South American rivers, especially in the Amazon basin, employing technologies such as radio and acoustic telemetry. She also leads the studies about the performance of fish passages in largest dams in South America. Lisiane has an M.S. in Zoology and a PhD in Freshwater Ecology.

Marcela is a Research Engineer at US Army Engineer Research and Development Center – Water Quality and Contaminant Modeling Branch. She has expertise in numerical modeling of the hydrodynamics and water quality parameters in rivers, tailraces, reservoirs and fish passage structures. Her background includes modeling of multiphase flows, total dissolved gas, and heat and mass transfer.

Dana McCoskey is an Environmental Technology Manager in DOE’s Water Power Technologies Office. Her background includes 18 years of conservation, fish and wildlife monitoring, and field ecology research. Her work at DOE involves both hydropower and marine energy. Research topics range from fish passage and aquatic connectivity, developing novel monitoring capabilities for sensitive species including acoustic telemetry and eDNA, turbine environmental performance, and advancing sustainability science to improve environmental outcomes of energy systems. She works closely with Reclamation and US Army Corps staff under the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for Federal Hydropower on fish protection topics and leads environmental research coordination with the Norwegian hydropower research institutes under a DOE-Norway MOU. She holds degrees in Zoology from Portland State University and Environmental Science and Public Policy from George Mason University.

Shauna is the Managing Director of Lower Columbia Fish Enhancement Group in Vancouver, Washington. Shauna has a B.S. in Wildlife Biology from the University of Montana, a Master’s of Public Administration from Boise State University, and a Ph.D. in Fisheries and Wildlife from Michigan State University. Her career highlights include working on double-crested cormorant management for USFWS in the Washington DC area, followed by completing doctoral studies in human dimensions and teaching environmental science in Michigan.  In 2018, she returned to her home state of Washington where she now leads a nonprofit that focuses on salmon habitat restoration and community engagement. 

Eva is a Research Scientist at Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s Freshwater Institute in Winnipeg. Her research team studies the effects of natural and anthropogenic changes on freshwater fishes in the prairie and arctic regions of Canada. Research areas include fish migration, fish passage, and the impacts of hydropower on fish.

Lee is a Professor and Research Scientist for the Institute for Land, Water, and Society at Charles Sturt University in Australia. He has lived and breathed fish passage research for over 20 years and has worked in government, universities and private industry. His research has been in several broad areas, including fish passage and fish migration, dietary interactions among native fish species, the impact of human disturbance on aquatic ecosystems and, more recently, mitigating hydropower impacts on tropical rivers in South East Asia. Lee’s work has also focused on developing innovative methods for assessment and improving existing fish collection techniques. Much of his work is applied and has fed back into adaptive management strategies, including the development of state and national policy related to fish passage in Australia and South East Asia. Lee presently manages over $10M in research projects and has active global collaborations on fish passage.

Teppo is a Senior Research Scientist at the National Resources Institute Finland (Luke). His expertise is in environmental ecology, especially related to fisheries and aquaculture. Recently he has been working to restore migratory fish species and conduct studies on fish community structure. For example, he oversees the fish-based ecological classification of rivers in Finland for the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). He has also been working on experimental studies, mainly with juvenile salmonids but also related to invasive species. He is involved with projects for several international organizations and has published more than 50 peer reviewed articles, several conference papers, and technical publications.

Aline is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Program in the Environment at the University of Michigan. She is currently the Faculty advisor for International Programs in Engineering. Her research interests are in the areas of biological, environmental and geophysical fluid dynamics, in particular stratified turbulence and fish behavior in turbulent flows. As co-founder of the Women in Fluids Network and the Women-Water Nexus, she has created partnerships between women engineers and scientists in developed and developing countries to promote research with a focus on the education of women in STEM, with an emphasis on the African continent. She has received numerous awards for her teaching/research and outreach efforts including a 2017 Fulbright Scholar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, 2016 Arthur F. Thurnau named Professorship, 2015 Willie Hobbs Mentoring Award, 2014 Global Engagement Recognition Award, and the 2012 University Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Connie is a Hydraulic Engineer at the Bureau of Reclamation’s Technical Service Center in Denver, Colorado in the Hydraulic Investigations and Laboratory Services group. Connie has 20 years of experience in physical hydraulic modeling and hydraulic analysis related to fish protection and fish passage, hydraulic structure performance and modifications, dam safety, canal operations, and river restoration. Connie is the theme lead for Reclamation’s prize competitions related to environmental compliance and was Reclamation’s technical lead for prize competitions on fish protection at water diversions and intakes and downstream fish passage at high-head dams. Connie obtained a Bachelor of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and a Master of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Connie is a registered Professional Engineer (P.E.) in the State of Colorado.

Kelly is an Assistant Professor with the Quantitative Fisheries Center in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University. Kelly’s research is focused on the ecology and management of Great Lakes fishes, as well as the application of decision analysis to natural resource management problems in the Great Lakes and beyond. Kelly received her B.A. in Biology and Spanish from the University of Virginia, her M.S. in Marine Biology from the College of Charleston, and her Ph.D. in Fisheries Science from the University of Georgia. Some of Kelly’s current research includes applying decision analysis to barrier removal and fish passage decisions in the Great Lakes, understanding the effects of ecosystem change on native preyfish species, and developing a decision framework for building resilience in Michigan’s coldwater streams.

Karilyn is a fisheries biologist and fluvial geomorphologist for the Okanagan Nation Alliance (ONA). Her work focuses on river restoration for salmon habitat using guidance from Traditional Ecological Knowledge. Karilyn has been working with the ONA Fisheries Department since 2002 supervising projects such as the McIntyre Dam and Skaha Dam fish passage, Shingle Dam decommissioning, Shuttleworth and Ellis creeks sediment basin fish passage, and the 13 Okanagan River Restoration Initiative projects. She lives and works in the unceded territory of the syilx / Okanagan Territory.

Leah is a Fisheries Biologist for the Bonneville Power Administration.

Meet the Organizing Committee

Alison is a Sustainable Hydropower Operations Research Scientist at PNNL with more than 12 years of experience studying the impacts of human development on fish populations. She has spent her career investigating how we can monitor fish health in affected ecosystems and leverage that information to improve the design and operation of anthropogenic structures. Alison is particularly interested in communicating her science to diverse audiences and supporting the future STEM workforce.

Brian has been an Earth Scientist at PNNL since 2006 with a primary emphasis in fisheries science. He is inspired by innovation and lately spends much of his time at PNNL as a research-development manager, bringing together teams to push technological boundaries while improving our Earth-energy systems. He is especially interested in understanding the interactions between renewable energy (e.g., waterpower) and new technologies that overcome and reduce the human impacts of energy generation on rivers and other aquatic systems. Brian maintains his own research portfolio quantifying the impacts of hydropower on migratory fishes and leveraging new technologies and innovative solutions to enable safe and effective fish passage that improves aquatic ecosystems and river connectivity.

Chris is a post-doctoral research associate at PNNL who uses social science approaches to investigate the human dimensions of renewable energy, hydropower, fish passage, and other socio-ecological issues. Chris has over 12 years of research experience in a broad range of topics, most recently including the completion of his doctoral dissertation in wildlife conservation and stakeholder engagement. He has collaborated with state and federal agencies, universities, and NGOs to assess support for conservation funding policies, and he has surveyed and interviewed stakeholders to gain a better understanding of stewardship and conservation-related behaviors, inform decision-making processes, and improve communication. In his career, Chris aims to develop innovative research and lead diverse interdisciplinary teams to tackle complex problems in management and conservation of natural resources.

Jon is a Senior Hydraulic Engineer for the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Walla-Walla District. He is a registered professional engineer and has been involved with the hydraulic design of fish passage improvements at the USACE hydropower projects for over 12 years. Major projects involve the juvenile fish facility upgrade at Lower Granite dam and Ice Harbor and McNary turbine design for fish passage. He has presented on fish passage design at several previous International Fish Passage conferences as well as multiple other conferences. He has a BS in Environmental Engineering from Oregon State University (1999) and a Masters in Civil Engineering from Colorado State University (2009).

Ritchie has served as the Chief of the Columbia Hydropower Branch within NOAA Fisheries’ West Coast Region since 2006 where he has been responsible for staff working on mainstem Snake and Columbia River hydropower issues, including habitat restoration, predator management and other programs to reduce or mitigate for project effects to improve salmon and steelhead survival and productivity. He is an active member of NOAA Fisheries’ national and regional hydropower coordination teams. He has been heavily involved in NOAA Fisheries’ Snake and Upper Columbia River Recovery Planning processes. From 1997 to 2006, he represented NOAA Fisheries as a biologist on a number of large Federal Energy Regulatory Commission relicensing processes, including Idaho Power Company’s Hells Canyon Complex, Douglas PUD’s Wells Project, and Chelan PUD’s Rocky Reach and Rock Island Projects.

Jeff has been a fishery scientist at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission since 1987, primarily working on salmonid tagging projects to assess survival.  These include PIT tagging adult Sockeye and Chinook Salmon and steelhead at Bonneville Dam and assessing run composition and upstream survival. Other projects include PIT tag juvenile Okanagan Basin Sockeye and PIT and coded wire tag Hanford Reach fall Chinook and tracking them downstream through the hydrosystem. He has also worked on using video to estimate escapement at fish ladders and weirs. 

Tom is a Fisheries Biologist for Public Utility District No. 1 of Douglas County, Washington, the owner/operator of the Wells Hydroelectric Project on the Columbia River. Tom is responsible for implementing the fish-passage and habitat-restoration components of the Wells Project Habitat Conservation Plan. He has a BS in Zoology and an MS in Fisheries from the University of Washington. His research pursuits have included hydroproject passage by juvenile and adult salmonids, behavior of juvenile stream-type Chinook in Columbia River reservoirs, monitoring effects of hatchery supplementation on target populations, local-scale movement of salmon fry and parr in natal streams, and the movement of stream fishes in the context of culvert design criteria. Prior to changing careers in 1996, Tom was a Dental Laboratory Technician, which has absolutely nothing to do with fish passage. 

Laura is the Policy Analyst for the Upper Columbia United Tribes (UCUT), which represents the five federally-recognized tribes in the upper Columbia: Coeur d’Alene, Colville, Kalispel, Kootenai, and Spokane tribes. At UCUT, Laura works with policy and technical experts at each of the tribes to advance the tribes’ natural resource priorities. Laura’s passions lie in collaborating with multiple entities on complex processes, strategically advancing goals through consensus and a solutions-driven approach, and engaging with Indigenous communities on environmental stewardship. Laura has had the privilege to present on fish passage research at a previous International Fish Passage Conference and is honored to now be part of the planning committee. Prior to joining UCUT, Laura worked at the Northwest Power and Conservation Council and earned her Executive Masters in Public Administration and Bachelors of Science in Environmental Studies and Geography. 

Casey has been a research scientist in the Colville Tribes Fish and Wildlife Department since 2011, and he worked for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife for 14 years before that. He has a Masters in Fisheries from Utah State University and completed his undergraduate studies at Adams State College. For Colville Tribes, Casey works across many sectors, including harvest, hatcheries, habitat, and hydropower. Casey is the Colville Tribes technical lead on salmon reintroduction to the blocked area upstream of Grand Coulee Dam.

Guillermo is a Professor and Fisheries Specialist focusing on salmonid ecology and watershed management.  He holds degrees in biology, resource management, and environmental studies. As part of his responsibilities at Oregon State University, he extends information and educational material and provides professional assistance to Extension agents, government agency personnel, watershed councils, and the public on salmonid ecology and behavior, fish habitat restoration, aquatic ecology, and watershed management-related issues.

Kevin is a Principal Investigator within the Fish Passage Design & Analysis Team at the Eastern Ecological Science Center’s S.O. Conte Research Laboratory. The mission of the team is to perform research directed towards restoration and protection of diadromous and riverine fishes. Kevin’s primary research area is the study of existing and novel fish passage structures through hydraulic modeling and experiments with live, actively migrating fish. In conjunction to his research, Kevin has served in multiple organizer roles for the International Fish Passage Conference since its inception in 2011 and currently serves as a member of the Steering Committee and Chair of the American Fisheries Society Bioengineering Section & American Society of Civil Engineers Environmental Water Resources Institute Joint Committee on Fisheries Engineering & Science.