Meet Our Staff

Alex studied biology with a focus on fish and wildlife management at Montana State University in Bozeman, where he graduated magna cum laude in 2003. During summers in Montana, he worked for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks on westslope cutthroat trout recovery efforts.

After graduating, Alex pursued his passion for teaching and climbing around the world for four years, living and working in five countries on three continents. He returned to the United States in 2007 to work as an ice-climbing and glacier guide in Alaska before beginning a master’s degree program in ecology, evolution and conservation biology at the University of Nevada, Reno. For his thesis research, he examined movement patterns, habitat use and survival of Lahontan cutthroat trout in the Truckee River.

While in Reno, Alex was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Science Partners Fellow, assisting local Advanced Placement biology courses with their laboratory programs. After earning his master’s degree in 2010, he worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Reno and the Lake Tahoe area on native species conservation and restoration efforts. He also taught wilderness survival courses at Truckee Meadows Community College before coming to Cornell University to pursue a doctorate in the Department of Natural Resources. His dissertation research focused on fisheries and aquatic ecology, water resource issues, statistical and spatial modeling and mapping using geographic information systems, and stream biogeochemistry.

During the 2014-15 academic year, Alex served as a Fulbright Fellow in Ecuador, conducting research on flow ecology and the effects of water withdrawals on aquatic fauna in the Napo River Basin. He completed his doctorate at Cornell University in May 2015 and then spent the summer as an invited faculty instructor at Central South University of Forestry and Technology in Changsha, China. He joined Heritage University as an assistant professor of environmental science in fall 2015.

Since arriving at Heritage, Dr. Alexiades has published several peer-reviewed scientific articles and serves as the principal investigator for the NSF i-NATURE and First Nations MESA programs to increase STEM opportunities for Native American students. He has a passion for social justice and creating pathways to higher education for underrepresented minorities. Alex is also a competitive ultra-endurance mountain bike racer for Chumba Cycles USA and Wanderlust Gear and a contributing editor at Bikepacker Magazine and gives talks all over the world about his science and exploration.