Dr. Rainer W. Bussmann earned his M.Sc. (Diploma) in Biology at the University of Tübingen, Germany, in 1993 and his doctorate at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, in 1994. He is an ethnobotanist and vegetation ecologist,. He is currently co-director of Saving Knowledge, La Paz, Bolivia, and Principal Scientist at the Department of Ethnobotany, Institute of Botany, Ilia State University, both of which he co-founded. Before, Dr. Bussmann was director of the William L. Brown Center (WLBC) at Missouri Botanical Garden, William L. Brown Curator of Economic Botany, and Senior Curator. Before accepting the directorship of WLBC, he held academic appointments as Research Fellow in Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin from 2006 to 2007, as Associate Professor of Botany and Scientific Director of Harold Lyon Arboretum at the University of Hawaii from 2003 to 2006, and as Assistant Professor at the University of Bayreuth from 1997 to 2003, following a postdoc at the same institution from 1994 to 1997. He holds affiliate faculty appointments at Washington University, St. Louis, USA; University of Missouri-St. Louis, USA; Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, USA; Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil; National University of San Marcos, Peru; and Ilia State University, Republic of Georgia, and serves as external thesis advisor at multiple other universities worldwide. His work focuses on ethnobotanical research and the preservation of traditional knowledge in Bolivia, Peru, Madagascar, the Caucasus, and the Himalayas. To date, Dr. Bussmann has authored over 270 peer-reviewed papers, over 1200 book chapters, and authored or edited over 35 books.
Dr. Bussmann is a past President of the Society for Economic Botany and has served as board/council member of the International Society for Ethnopharmacology, Society of Ethnobiology, Botanical Society of America, and International Society of Ethnobiology. See more of his workon his website (https://www.cejaandina.org/rainer-w-bussmann/) and download publications from ResearchGate (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rainer_Bussmann).
