Marie Simovich received her BS and MS in biology from Cal Poly Pomona and her PhD in biology from the University of California, Riverside, studying a spadefoot toad hybrid zone in the Sonoran Desert. She did post-doctoral research at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles on the genetics of whiptail lizards of the Sonoran Desert. She taught Population Biology, Conservation Biology, and Desert Biology at the University of San Diego for 31 years. Overlapping this time, she has worked extensively on the population biology of ephemeral pool crustaceans including those found in desert playas. She remains a research associate at the University of San Diego and at San Diego State University.