Russell J. Gray is a data scientist, ecologist, and conservationist dedicated to research-based conservation management plans and strategies to protect the natural world. Russell has worked on various projects in Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the United States focusing on spatial ecology, community assemblages, invasive species management, species recovery, and combatting illegal wildlife trade.

Current priorities of research include: advancing and incorporating new technologies, machine learning, and deep learning into ecological and conservation management practice; to build capacity for other researchers in R programming, data mining, big data wrangling/analysis, and to create better data repository, data sharing, and open science practices among scientists.