Chelydra Consulting Group

About the CCG

We help conservation organizations and research teams:

  1. Execute effective species recovery and ecological restoration programs
  2. Advance research efforts & publications
  3. Secure and steward grant funding
  4. Identify & assist with general organizational or procedural pain points / bottlenecks.
  5. Organize successful professional conferences

Combined, our consultants:

  1. Have been awarded more than $400,000 in grants
  2. Serve on multiple conservation-foundation boards
  3. Bring thousands of hours of field and laboratory experience supporting scientific research and conservation initiatives

Drawing on expertise across a broad range of disciplines, our consultants have collectively published 22 research papers in leading peer-reviewed journals, including Biology, Methods in Ecology and Evolution, and Ichthyology & Herpetology. Our work ranges from developing novel algorithms to detect shark movement in Costa Rica and quantifying freshwater biodiversity in the Southeastern United States to reconstructing the phylogeny and phylogeography of Mexican amphibians using modern genetic techniques.

Visit the Contact Us page to begin a discussion. We look forward to meeting you.

Organization

Our team

Michael Skibsted

CEO · Co-founder

Kenneth Wang

COO · Co-founder

Jaden Clark

Partner

Michael Skibsted speaking at a podium

CEO · Co-founder

Michael Skibsted

Michael Skibsted is a recent graduate of the University of Georgia, where he studied biology and ecology. Michael has had a lifelong fascination with turtles, which has grown into a broader interest in biodiversity, conservation, and bioinformatics. He works with hundreds of individuals and organizations such as the Turtle Conservancy, Turtle Survival Alliance, and Re:wild on projects ranging from mapping freshwater diversity in the Southeastern United States to comparative genomics.

He has co-authored eight papers focused on turtle population biology and conservation and is an author of the Lynx Nature Books Handbook of the Reptiles of the World: Turtles and Crocodiles volume. He has worked with turtles in 30 U.S. states and ten countries, including Belize, Costa Rica, Madagascar, and Colombia. He also sits on the boards of the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles Founders Fellows Fund and the Moorcroft Conservation Foundation, where he works on fundraising and implementing small grants.

Michael was recognized as a Stanford Scholar while at UGA and is a recipient of the 2025 Udall Scholarship and a 2026 Fulbright Research Grant, which he will use to study turtle communication in Brazil. Michael hopes to make a substantial impact on the protection and study of turtles and biodiversity throughout his academic career and as co-founder of the CCG.

Portrait of Kenneth Wang

COO · Co-founder

Kenneth Wang

Kenneth Wang graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2025 with a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering and three lead-author publications in systematics, morphology, and ecology. His interest in herpetology began in high school through the gracious mentorship of Dr. Todd Pierson. During his time with the Pierson Lab, his publication on red salamander head morphology earned him recognition as an SSAR Founders’ Fellow and an associated fellowship grant at the 2022 Joint Meeting of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists.

Upon enrolling in college, Kenneth joined the Complex Rheology and Biomechanics Lab at Georgia Tech as an undergraduate researcher. While assisting with centipede biomechanics and robotics research, his photograph of Scolopendra polymorpha undergoing an experimental trial earned him cover-author recognition in the Journal of Experimental Biology, volume 226, issue 4.

At the 2022 International Herpetological Symposium, Kenneth joined Michael to interview Dr. Whit Gibbons for CheloniaCast’s program “Why Turtles Matter?” There he met Dr. Joseph Mendelson, who asked him what kind of research he would like to do. It was a quick and easy answer: systematics. With Dr. Mendelson’s mentorship and renewed collaboration with Dr. Pierson, Kenneth published a phylogeographic study of Incilius mamoreus in Ichthyology & Herpetology. Kenneth is grateful for his past mentors, who have graciously accepted an engineering student and enabled him to pursue passions beyond his degree discipline. Although Kenneth currently works as fab supervisor for a semiconductor foundry, he hopes to continue benefiting wildlife and research as co-founder of the CCG.

Portrait of Jaden Clark

Partner

Jaden Clark

Jaden is a Stanford PhD student, Knight-Hennessy Scholar, and NSF Graduate Research Fellow whose work spans machine learning, robotics, biomechanics, and animal conservation. He has built robotic systems to track endangered sharks in Costa Rica, designed new algorithms for drones to survey penguins in Antarctica, and conducted research expeditions across the United States, Costa Rica, Cambodia, Kiribati, Palmyra Atoll, and the broader Pacific.

His technical background includes machine learning, computer vision, robotics, sensing, data analysis, and experimental field research, with a focus on developing tools that help scientists better understand and conserve natural systems. Jaden’s research has been published in leading robotics and biology venues, including the International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Robotics: Science and Systems, Integrative and Comparative Biology, and Methods in Ecology and Evolution.