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Professor Scott Elias

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Professor Scott Elias
Department of Geography
Royal Holloway
Egham, Surrey
TW20 0EX, UK

Phone: 01784-443647
FAX: 01784-472836
E-mail: S.Elias@rhul.ac.uk

Scott Elias grew up in Colorado, in the Rocky Mountain region of the western United States. He attended the University of Colorado, and got BA degree in Environmental Biology. He continued his academic career at the same university, and received his PhD in Environmental Biology in 1980. His thesis topic concerned paleoecology of Holocene-age peat deposits in arctic Canada, focusing on insect fossil analyses. While in graduate school, Scott spent six months receiving training in fossil insect analysis from Russell Coope, at University of Birmingham.

Following his PhD, Scott became a post-doctoral fellow under Prof. Alan Morgan in the Earth Science Department of the University of Waterloo, Ontario. He also spent six months as a visiting scientist at the Geobotanical Institute of the University of Berne, Switzerland, in 1981. Scott returned to the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado, in 1982, and was a research associate and fellow of the institute during the past 20 years. His research continued to focus on paleoenvironmental reconstructions based on fossil insect assemblages. His work has mainly been in the Rocky Mountain region, the arid southwestern regions, and in Alaska. He has authored six books on paleoecology and natural history of Alaska, the Rocky Mountains, and the arid Southwest. In 2000, Scott accepted a lectureship in the Geography Department of Royal Holloway, University of London. He also has maintained an affiliation with INSTAAR.

Scott became Professor of Quaternary Science in 2007. He is the editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Quaternary Sciences, a four-volume reference work published by Elsevier in 2007. The encyclopedia has won the Geoscience Information Society (GSIS) Mary B. Ansari Best Reference Work award for 2007.