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Leadership Transition in Turkana Basin Institute

July 24, 2024

Dear Stony Brook University Community,

I am reaching out to share important information regarding the continued growth and success of Stony Brook’s Turkana Basin Institute. The Turkana Basin in northwestern Kenya is a renowned site of research and discovery around some of the biggest questions of our time concerning our origins, our current role and responsibilities and, most critically, our future on a changing planet.

Effective September 1, Lawrence Martin will step down from his role as director of TBI, to be succeeded by Dino J. Martins, who has served as CEO of TBI (Kenya) Ltd. since August 2022 and has been involved with the institute since 2011. Dino will join the Stony Brook faculty on a full-time basis on September 1 with a Research Professor position in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. As the two have worked hand-in-hand over the last several years, this will be a seamless transition in the leadership of TBI. Lawrence will take the title TBI Director Emeritus and will continue to provide support for TBI’s fundraising efforts by organizing and leading donor visits to Kenya as well as working on several other projects for the University.

Lawrence has led TBI as director since 2007 working in close partnership with the famed paleontologist Richard Leakey until his death in January 2022. During Lawrence’s directorship, Richard’s vision for the Turkana Basin Institute was developed into the world-renowned research institute that it is today. TBI’s mission is to facilitate the logistics of field research in the Turkana Basin, a remote region of sub-Saharan Africa, by providing permanent research support infrastructure. Fund-raising to implement the project began in 2005 and funds have been raised every year since for the construction and running costs of its two field campuses, TBI-Turkwel and TBI-Ileret, as well as an administrative support center in Nairobi.

Today, TBI provides a sophisticated environment to support the research of scientists and students at the field campuses, each of which comprises 15 to 20 major buildings providing accommodation and dining facilities for up to 60 scientists and students as well as the permanent staff of about 40. In addition, there are multiple laboratories, classrooms for field schools, and conference facilities. To facilitate access to these remote locations, TBI purchased a Cessna 208 Grand Caravan in 2015, which operates as Air Turkana, and which provides reduced cost flying for education and research that is subsidized by revenue from commercial charters. 

The TBI Origins field school, a semester long, 15-credit program was instituted in 2011, and was followed by a summer Origins field school, and a Global Innovation summer field school targeted at engineering students. TBI also hosts field schools for American University, Columbia, Princeton and, starting this summer, Harvard. 

During Lawrence’s term as Director, TBI raised almost $40 million in philanthropic gifts and pledges through the Stony Brook Foundation (SBF) to fund construction and research support operations of the two field campuses. Following the death of Richard Leakey in 2022, TBI began an effort to raise a $30 million endowment to ensure that the field campuses continue to operate to support research long into the future. To date, almost $18 million has been pledged to the Richard Leakey Memorial Endowment for TBI.

As Director of TBI, Dino will build upon these many developments and will continue to enhance the institute’s operations and prestige. In addition to a close partnership with Stony Brook colleagues, Dino will work with the TBI International Advisory Board, which supports TBI’s fundraising efforts. They are tremendous advocates for TBI’s success and have played a pivotal role in securing resources, including philanthropic support and faculty lines. 

Dino is internationally respected for his evolutionary biology and entomological research, biodiversity conservation work, and natural history writing, and he is widely known as one of Kenya’s leading biological scientists. Dino graduated with a B.A. in Anthropology from Indiana University in 1999 and worked on his M.Sc. in Botany at the University of KwaZulu Natal in 2004. He earned his Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University in 2011 before joining TBI as a postdoctoral fellow at Stony Brook University. Dino has taught in the TBI Origins field school every semester it has been offered since Spring 2011.

On completion of his postdoc, Dino took on the position of Resident Academic Director of the TBI Origins Field School, a position that he held for three years before accepting the position of Executive Director of the Mpala Research Center in Laikipia, Kenya, which is overseen by Princeton University, the Smithsonian Institution, the Kenyan Wildlife Service, and the National Museums of Kenya. During his seven years as Director, Dino dramatically improved operations and finances at Mpala and greatly expanded the number of institutions conducting research there. 

Dino’s research in the Turkana Basin has included the description of new species of bees, including some of the most ancient lineages of bees known and the discovery of genera previously not recorded from Africa. Dino is also a Co-PI of the Turkana Genome Project, which brings together dozens of international scientists to look at the complex interactions among human genes, the environment and adaptation in a world that is increasingly mismatched between our biology and technology/culture. Dino is actively building links and collaborations globally to expand the scientific frontiers of research at TBI. This includes building on the excellent fundamental research around human origins and evolution, to other disciplines that intersect with the fields of evolution and ecology, climate change and the future of sustainable human existence and development.

I am grateful to Lawrence for his outstanding leadership of TBI. I look forward to working with Dino to build upon the incredible foundation that has been established and to elevate TBI to even greater heights. 

Sincerely,
Carl

Carl Lejuez
Provost and Executive Vice President