David R. Maddison

David R. Maddison became the director of the Oregon State Arthropod Collection in 2010, when he was hired into the Department of Integrative Biology (then called Zoology) as the Leona & Harold Rice Endowed Professor of Systematic Entomology.   Prior to that, Dr. Maddison had spend many years at the University Arizona.  Dr. Maddison is a Coleopterist who has spent his career working to unravel the diversity and evolutionary history of primarily Carabidae and especially the incredibly speciose genus Bembidion(although he has had students who have worked on a myriad of other arthropods).  Outside of beetle circles, Dr. Maddison is perhaps best known for his work in phylogenetic theory and methodology, and for his contributions to several widely used software packages, namely: McClade and Mesquite.  He is also a lead figure in the development of theTree of Life Web Project, a collaborative internet project to provide a centralized resource for navigating the phylogenetic tree of all living creatures.