Dr. Bruce Conn, dean of the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences at Berry College, will preside over the annual conference of the American Society of Parasitologists, which is being held in Knoxville.

Conn currently serves as president of the ASP, which consists of more than 1,000 researchers representing universities, corporations and government laboratories around the world, as well as hundreds of additional scientists in nine regional affiliate societies across North America. These scientists study parasitic diseases plaguing humans, domesticated animals and wildlife.

Conn is a prolific researcher with active interests around the globe. In the years following the end of the Cold War, he was one of the first Americans to become deeply involved in research being conducted in countries that were part of the old Soviet Bloc. In this capacity, he was invited to be a session organizer for the first major NATO-sponsored scientific conference in Eastern Europe (Poznan, Poland) after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

During the past year, he has organized a workshop in Slovakia of the world’s top tapeworm researchers and co-chaired two symposia in Paris, France. He also has been invited to organize groups at three consecutive European-wide parasitology congresses.

For the past 10 years, Conn has held an adjunct position at Harvard University, where he oversees the parasite research collections at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. He chaired the department of biology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., before joining the faculty at Berry.

A native of Cleveland, Tenn., Conn graduated from Lee University before completing his Ph.D. and serving on the faculty at the University of Cincinnati. He was a professor at St. Lawrence University in New York before returning home to Tennessee in 1993.

He currently lives Rome and Monteagle, Tenn., with Chattanooga serving as his operational hub. Along with his wife and scientific collaborator, Denise Conn, he is a member of Chattanooga’s Lookout Rowing Club and the Chattanooga Track Club.