Nucharin Songsasen

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Nucharin Songsasen (Thai: นุชรินทร์ ศงสะเสน) is a Thai-born biologist who leads the Center for Species Survival at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. She is an expert in global canid conservation, working with species like maned wolves, African wild dogs, and dholes.

Growing up in Thailand, she accompanied her veterinarian father on farm visits around Bangkok. She earned a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from Kasetsart University in 1988. After practicing as a veterinarian, she found euthanizing animals difficult and chose to focus on reproductive science. She earned a Master of Science in 1993 and a Ph.D. in 1997 from the University of Guelph. There, she worked with cryobiologist Dr. Stanley Leibo and helped produce the world’s first lambs from cryopreserved embryos via IVF, and she pioneered mouse sperm cryopreservation.

She joined the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (SCBI) in 2002 and has led the Global Canid Conservation program, expanding it from lab work to field conservation in Brazil, Thailand, and Myanmar. Her lab develops methods to grow ovarian follicles from domestic dogs and cats in vitro, to preserve genetics from wild canids and felids. She was part of the team that achieved the first successful in vitro fertilization in domestic dogs. In December 2018 she became head of the Center for Species Survival at SCBI. She has held adjunct positions at the University of Maryland, Cornell University, and George Mason University, and serves on the IUCN Canid Specialist Group and advises the AZA Canid Taxon Advisory Group.