BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

 Arjun Mallipatna Gopalaswamy was born on 10 June 1976 in Bangalore, India. He grew

up in a city with his parents and a sister. While pursuing his undergraduate education, he was

actively involved with a mountaineering club in his college which exposed him to myriad

landscapes and forests of India. This made him think more seriously about wildlife and nature

conservation issues and a future along those lines. He completed his undergraduate education

with a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering in May 1999. He then started his own software

business company and was part of it for two years before deciding to dedicate all his time doing

ecology related field work. He worked as a field research assistant in a tiger project of the

Wildlife Conservation Society India Program, where he was fortunate to know and benefit

from outstanding field biologists and conservationists with whom he worked. In August 2004, he

began his graduate study at the University of Florida in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and

Conservation. He received his Master of Science in December 2006.