Cris Diaz holds a PhD from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She has used traditional and molecular approaches to study sponge biodiversity and ecology for over 20 years, focusing on sponge-microbe nitrification, sponge-cyanobacteria associations, and sponge systematics and biogeography. Cris is very interested in marine sponge biodiversity, both from a present and an historical perspective. She has collaborated with other taxonomists, natural product researchers, microbiologists, and ecologists throughout her career, exploring the Caribbean, the South Pacific, and the Indian Ocean. Currently, she is a research associate at the Museo Marino de Margarita in Venezuela, and a visiting scientist to the National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. Bob Thacker and Diaz created a course, Taxonomy and Ecology of Caribbean Sponges (www.stri.org, Diaz et al. 2006), which has introduced 40 young scientists to the science of sponge taxonomy and ecology and its applications.