Mike Kost serves as Associate Curator at University of Michigan Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum and as a Lecturer in the School for Environment and Sustainability, where he teaches a course on ecology and botany. As a curator he focuses on natural areas stewardship planning, rare plant conservation, and making data on living collections accessible for teaching, learning, and research. Before joining U-M, he served as the Lead Ecologist and a Senior Conservation Scientist with Michigan Natural Features Inventory at Michigan State University, where he focused on documenting and describing natural communities and rare species and identifying key sites for biodiversity conservation and management. In this role, he coauthored over 80 publications, including three books on the natural communities of Michigan.