Dr. Daniel Einstein received the 2018 Jack Davis Conservation Award for his work to protect, acquire, and restore great blue heron habitat in Olympia. He played a primary role in getting the Olympia City Council to pass significant amendments to the Critical Areas Ordinance (CAO) that allow nomination of locally important species for protection and adoption of habitat management guidelines.
His interest in conservation is long standing, fostered at an early age. As a child, he was turned on to nature in the woods and at the Audubon Society’s Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary in Lincoln, MA. As a young adult, he was involved with his neighbors in the preservation of Katahdin Woods in Lexington MA. In 2000, he moved with his wife from Seattle to a farm in Olympia near Woodard Bay, where they enjoyed watching the great blue herons from the Woodard Bay colony. In 2006, they moved to their current residence in West Olympia, where their daughter was born. From their front porch, they have enjoyed watching the West Bay colony during their raucous breeding season, and have followed with increasing concern the progressive destruction of their nesting grounds. That concern grew into a commitment to OlyEcosystems mission to protect, preserve and restore the diverse ecosystems of Olympia that that include the freshwater, shoreline, tidal waters, and upland forests that are home to the Pacific Great Blue Heron, cutthroat trout, salmon and companion species.
Dr. Einstein is an assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering at Saint Martin’s University, with a restless curiosity about all things. He received his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Washington. Prior to his appointment at Saint Martin’s, he worked in research with 15+ years’ experience participating in multiple interdisciplinary research teams in the national laboratory system, at the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles and at the Cleveland Clinic. His research focuses on theoretical developments in nonlinear continuum mechanics and the development of numerical frameworks applied to computational biomechanics in the heart and lung. He has authored over 50 peer-reviewed papers.