Dr. Matt von Konrat is Head of Botanical Collections at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and Secretary of the International Association of Bryologists. Originally from New Zealand, he received his PhD from the University of Auckland and is a bryologist specializing in liverwort biodiversity, taxonomy, systematics, and biogeography. His research has a strong geographic focus on the South Pacific, where long-term international collaborations, fieldwork, specimen-based research, and digitization are helping document poorly known bryophyte diversity and make collections and biodiversity data more widely accessible.
At the Field Museum, he leads botanical collections encompassing more than three million specimens and works at the intersection of collections-based research, digitization, open science, and public engagement. He has been extensively involved in large-scale mobilization of bryophyte collection data and in developing community-science approaches to specimen transcription. More recently, his work has explored artificial intelligence and large language models as tools for accelerating the transcription and accessibility of natural history collections. He is committed to international collaboration, mentorship, and strengthening connections across the global bryological community.
