Team

Meet the team behind ESB AI Lab.

Leadership
Board of Directors
All board members serve in a volunteer capacity.
Edwin Solares

Edwin Alberto Solares, Ph.D.

Founder, President & Executive Director
Class III

Computational biologist and AI researcher. Previously Lecturer at UC San Diego (Computer Science & Engineering, Halicioglu Data Science Institute). His research has been published in Nature Plants, PNAS, Genome Research, and other leading journals.

Education

Ph.D. Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, UC Irvine (2021)
M.S. Biology, UC Irvine (2019)
B.S. Biomedical Computing, UC Irvine (2014)

Allison Moreno

Allison Renee Moreno, Ph.D.

Secretary
Class II

Marine biogeochemist at UC Santa Cruz. Her research focuses on surface particulate organic matter, community composition, and phytoplankton physiology. Utilizing field observations, laboratory experiments, and modeling techniques to address climate change impacts on deoxygenation and hypoxia. Founding board member of ESB AI Lab.

Education

Ph.D. Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, UC Irvine (2019)
M.S. Biological Science, UC Irvine (2018)
B.S. Marine Science, CSU Monterey Bay (2014)

Kwasi Connor

Kwasi M. Connor, Ph.D.

Treasurer
Class I

Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Irvine. His research employs integrative approaches spanning transcriptomics, metabolomics, and field ecology to characterize how marine invertebrates respond to environmental fluctuation, with the California mussel (Mytilus californianus) as his primary study system. UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow and Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow.

Education

Ph.D. Biological Sciences (Marine Environmental Biology), USC (2012)
M.S. Biology, CSU Los Angeles (2006)
B.A. Accounting, Morehouse College (1992)

Contributors
Volunteers
Researchers and professionals contributing their expertise to our programs.
ET
Edward Tang
Volunteer Research Associate
Bioinformatics and machine learning
SH
Samuel Hernandez
Volunteer Research Associate
Edge AI software development and model deployment for real-time inference
Research Partners
Collaborators
Faculty partners across the University of California system and beyond.
Dr. Mary Lu Arpaia UC Riverside, Botany & Plant Sciences
Dr. Jackson Gross UC Davis, Animal Sciences
Dr. Adam Summers UW Friday Harbor Laboratories
Dr. Brandon Gaut UC Irvine, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Dr. Dario Cantu UC Davis, Viticulture & Enology
Dr. Elizabeth Hemming Shrader Colorado State University
Dr. Donovan German UC Irvine

Work With Us

We welcome researchers, students, volunteers, and community members who share our commitment to building AI for conservation, agriculture, and education.