Michael R. Heithaus is Vice Provost of Environmental Resilience and the Biscayne Bay Campus, executive dean of the College of Arts, Sciences & Education (CASE) and professor of Biological Sciences at Florida International University. He previously served as Director of the Marine Sciences Program and Founding Executive Director of the School of Environment, Arts & Society. Dr. Heithaus is an ecologist known for his work on predator-prey interactions, especially in oceans. His research has advanced our understanding of the magnitude of non-lethal predator effects in communities and ecosystems (the “ecology of fear”) and revealed the diverse and important roles that sharks, marine mammals and sea turtles play in ecosystems. He and colleagues have also been at the forefront of developing and deploying novel technologies including animal borne cameras. He is an author on more than 230 scientific publications, co-editor of five books, and has been involved in more than 30 successful grant proposals as PI and coPI totaling over $30 million in funding. He is an Explorers Club fellow and a member of the Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine of Florida where he served as an inaugural member of its board of directors. Under his leadership, FIU’s College of Arts, Sciences & Education has increased annual research awards from ca. $40 million to over $100 million and improved four-year graduation rates from 27% to 67%. The college helped elevate FIU to No. 13 in the world for positive impact (Times Higher Education) and to No. 2 in the nation for research expenditures in psychiatry and psychology (NSF HERD). Active in community engagement, Heithaus has developed K-12 education materials and authored supplemental science programs that bring real research into the classroom that have impacted millions of students. He has been a member of the Mayor’s Sustainability Advisory Council for Miami-Dade County and served on the ZooMiami Foundation Board of Directors. An internationally known science communicator, Dr. Heithaus has hosted or appeared in more than 40 documentary films and is frequently interviewed by local, national and international media. Dr. Heithaus received his BA in Biological Sciences from Oberlin College (1995) and PhD from Simon Fraser University (2001). He was a postdoctoral scientist and staff scientist at Mote Marine Laboratory and worked for the Remote Imaging Laboratory at National Geographic before joining FIU in 2003.