Joe Mendelson

Joe Mendelson is a first-generation punk rocker who morphed into research biologist and conservationist. The only drawback to this career path is that his hearing is too damaged from playing in bands to hear the Neotropical frogs that he studies. He publishes in herpetology and conservation under the name Joseph R. Mendelson III and plays co-handles guitars and vocals in the science-punk band Leucine Zipper & The Zinc Fingers, pseudonym Gringo Perdido. He is Director of Research at Zoo Atlanta and an Adjunct Professor in School of Biology at Georgia Tech.