Brad Hubley is the entomology collection manger in the Department of Natural History.

Brad began his career at the ROM in 1984 as a summer student in the then Department of Invertebrate Zoology.  Having studied both entomology and invertebrate zoology at the University of Toronto, his academic skills were put to the test as his duties focussed on sorting insects and non-insect invertebrates from a collection of aquatic organisms that had been donated to the department by an environmental consulting firm.  The following year, a position opened up for an entomology technician and Brad has been at the ROM ever since.

Less than three months after being hired, Brad participated in what would turn out to be the first of more than two dozen field trips across the globe to document insect biodiversity.  This first trip was for six weeks throughout the southwestern US, north to Alberta, and back to Ontario.  Since then he has travelled to southeast Asia (Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Palau), Central and South America (Costa Rica, Guyana), the Russian far east, across Canada and as far north as Banks Island in the Northwest Territories.  An avid SCUBA diver, Brad was also pleased to participate in coral reef fish surveys in Palau and Vietnam.

Brad’s primary responsibilities at the ROM centre on the day-to-day management of the museum’s entomology collection of approximately 1.2 million specimens (this figure does not include millions more of fluid-preserved samples in bulk collections obtained via Malaise traps, pan and light traps, etc.).  He prepares loans for specialists from other institutions, databases specimens within the collection and participates in a variety of public programming activities, e.g. March Break, BioBlitz, Fact or Fiction, curator’s corner.  He was also a member of the Gallery Development Team for the ROM’s “Life in Crisis: Schad Gallery of Biodiversity”.  Currently, when not found in the entomology collection room, Brad is concentrating on a new project; he has been assigned the role as lead for the migration of the ROM’s Natural History databases into a single, new collection management system, “The Museum System”.  Once this project is complete, all of the museum’s collection databases will be housed within one system and made publically available via the ROM’s website.

In his spare time, Brad is an avid canoeist and backcountry camper.  Every year he can be found spending up to ten days paddling throughout remote areas of Ontario where he and his canoeing partner can go for days without seeing another soul.  No trip is considered a success however without the sighting of a moose!