Elephant poaching is a tough issue to solve. Conservationist and 2016 National Geographic Emerging Explorer Gao Yufang is approaching the problem from a different angle: encouraging cross-cultural communication, bringing Chinese and Africans together to try to understand each other's viewpoints regarding the elephant ivory trade.

How were the Giza Pyramids built? Archeologist and 2016 National Geographic emerging explorer Yukinori Kawae is trying to figure this out. As a young boy Kawae was fascinated by the Egyptian pyramids, and with his parent's permission moved to Egypt after high school because he wanted to see the pyramids in person. Now Kawae is heading up an interdisciplinary approach to studying the pyramids, collaborating with computer scientists and mathematicians to collect 3-D data that will provide a new...

In 2015, Wasfia Nazreen, a 2016 National Geographic emerging explorer, became the first Bangladeshi to summit the highest peak on each of the seven continents, a mountaineering feat known as climbing the seven summits. As a girl Nazreen struggled with her society's expectations of how a woman should act and behave, which drove her as a young woman to enter the nonprofit world and work to empower women. Eventually Nazreen conceived of the idea to combine her passion for mountain climbing and...

While backpacking through Africa after finishing college, 2016 National Geographic Emerging Explorer Naftali Honig came face-to-face with the corruption driving wildlife trafficking. After watching a commercial bush-meat trader bust while knowing the poacher would never face serious punishment, Honig knew he had to do something. Instead of going to medical school like he had been planning, Honig co-founded the EAGLE Network with a group of activists. The organization's main goal is to bring...

Look around. How many objects in your vicinity contain recycled material? Probably none. Engineer and 2016 National Geographic Emerging Explorer Arthur Huang is trying to change this by designing from trash new materials that can be used to make furniture, buildings, and even airplanes. Huang takes the stage to share his passion for sustainability, the challenges of reusing waste, and his incredible work pioneering new materials to give our trash a second life.

There are not many people who can say their career started with a pile of poop, but that is just what happened with marine biologist and 2016 National Geographic Emerging Explorer Asha De Vos. Fresh out of undergrad, De Vos managed to talk her way onto a whale research vessel headed for her home country of Sri Lanka. The vessel came across some blue whales ... and an unexpected scene. A captivating story teller, De Vos takes the stage to share her passion for whales and the work she is doing...

When it comes to European Ice Age cave art, researchers have primarily focused their attention on the animal and human art, largely ignoring the geometric signs found to the sides of these beautiful paintings. At most sites, the geometric signs outnumber the animal paintings by two to one. That intrigued Genevieve Von Petzinger, a 2016 National Geographic emerging explorer. What could these rarely studied signs mean? Von Petzinger takes the stage to talk about her passion for exploration and...

Originally interested in building an underwater robot to explore a cave rumored to have gold and treasure, 2016 National Geographic Emerging Explorer David Lang and a friend had no idea where their curiosity and drive for exploration would lead them. They turned to the Internet for help building their underwater robot, and a community of people emerged to assist. With the ability to descend to a maximum depth of a hundred meters, their low-cost underwater robot, called OpenROV, is redefining...

The recent and incredible discovery of the human ancestor Homo naledi is changing the field of paleoanthropology. Biological anthropologist Marina Elliott, a 2016 National Geographic emerging explorer and the first scientist to enter the cave chamber after the initial bones were found, takes the stage to talk about what is was like to squeeze through the cramped cave system to reach the remains and how this remarkable discovery is changing the way we think about our human origins.

Found everywhere from the rim of a lava lake to the inside an iceberg, microbes are remarkable organisms that can live in places humans can only dream of. How do they do it? And what can we learn from them about the limits of life both on our planet and elsewhere in our solar system? Geobiologist Jeffrey Marlow, a 2016 National Geographic emerging explorer, is working on answering these questions. Much of Marlow's focus has been on the deep sea and exploring microbial metabolism. He is...

From the young age of 12, Jedidah Isler, a 2016 National Geographic emerging explorer, knew she wanted to be an astrophysicist. Despite the fact that there are so few women of color in the disciple of astrophysics, Isler and her family knew that if anyone could do it, she could. The first African-American woman to receive a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Yale, Isler studies blazing quasars, which are basically supermassive, hyperactive black holes. Isler takes the stage to talk about her passion...

We lose five elephants every hour, five lions per day, and a rhino every six hours. We are in a race against time to save these magnificent animals from extinction. For the past 30 years, award-winning filmmakers and National Geographic Explorers Dereck and Beverly Joubert have dedicated their lives to protecting and saving key African species. Through the years the Jouberts have created more than 25 films for National Geographic, written 11 books, and founded the Big Cats Initiative with...

The Luangwa Valley in Zambia is one of the last remaining strongholds for lions in Africa, and 2016 National Geographic Emerging Explorer Thandiwe Mweetwa plans to do everything she can to keep it that way. After losing both her parents as a young girl, Mweetwa left her small town in southern Zambia to live with her uncle in a rural area in the north that had no running water or electricity. While the transition was difficult, it was integral to the direction in which she would choose to take...

Orangutans play a critical role in maintaining the health of their forest ecosystem through the dispersal of seeds, giving them the name gardeners of the forest. However, their species is under severe threat. As forests are cleared to provide room for agriculture and palm oil plantations, many orangutans are left without a home. This makes them more vulnerable to poachers. Sumatran orangutans, classified as critically endangered, are estimated to only have 7,500 left. The first time 2016...