Russell Alpizar-Jara was educated at the University of Costa Rica and at North Carolina State University (Raleigh, USA), where he obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in the Biomathematics Graduate Program, in the Statistics Department. He worked on model development and estimation methodologies for sampling animal populations, particularly, on distance and capture-recapture sampling. He is currently Associate Professor in the Mathematics Department at University of Évora (Portugal) and was Elected Board Member of the Portuguese Statistical Society for the period of 2006-2011. He has been Visitor Professor at University of Costa Rica and North Carolina State University, U.S.A. He was also Visiting Scientist at the Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland, U.S.A. He has served as Associate Editor and Referee in various international peer-reviewed journals. Professor Alpizar-Jara is particularly interested in narrowing the gap between theory and applications, and often works in interdisciplinary groups. His current research interests include Sampling Animal Populations; Population Dynamics Modelling; Statistical Ecology, Wildlife and Fisheries. More recently, he has been involved in methodological assessment and new developments for distance sampling estimation, in particular, for mountain ungulates applications.