Dr. Andrea Contina is an Assistant Professor in the School of Integrative Biological and Chemical Sciences at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Notable projects developed in his lab are the Southern Ornithology Network for Applied Research (SONAR), a distributed system of autonomous acoustic recording units that collect nocturnal bird vocalizations, and the “feather bank” in Brownsville, one of the largest feather collections in Texas. Together with his students and colleagues, the Contina Lab is marking important contributions to the ecology and conservation of migratory birds in the Lower Rio Grande Valley.