Jon Erlandson (PhD, 1988; University of California, Santa Barbara) is the Executive Director of the Museum of Natural and Cultural History and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Oregon. Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013, Jon has conducted archaeological research in coastal California, Oregon, Alaska, and Iceland. His interests focus on the development of maritime societies, human evolution and migrations, and the peopling of the Americas. Jon is internationally known for his kelp highway hypothesis, which challenges the long-held view that the First Americans walked across the Bering land bridge and points to evidence that the earliest migrations were by maritime people who followed a Pacific Rim route from Northeast Asia. He has written and edited 20 books, coedited eight volumes of the Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, and published more than 300 scholarly articles.