People

Kai Zhu is an assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of California Santa Cruz. His research interests include global change ecology, ecological modeling and environmental data science. In 2021, Kai was named an Early Career Fellow of ESA. Kai was elected a fellow based on work blending classical ecological theories with modern computational tools to study global issues…

Dr. Stacy Philpott completed her Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Washington, and then went on to complete her Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan. For her outstanding contributions in ecology, specifically in the areas of agroecology, trophic interactions, community assembly, insect ecology, and relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem services; and for significant…

Mahi Puri is a Ph.D. student focusing her research on prioritizing and identifying opportunities for carnivore conservation in human-dominated landscapes in India. She cares deeply about wildlife conservation as she has been working on these issues for the last 13 years. She was awarded the 2020 Murray F. Buell Award, for her work, “The balancing act: Maintaining leopard-wild prey equilibrium…

Dr. Erika Zavaleta is a community and ecosystem ecologist.  She received her BA and MA in and Ph.D. in biological sciences from Stanford University.  At UC Santa Cruz, she is a professor in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department. There, she and her research group study the drivers and consequences of shifting biological diversity and the role of ecology in…

Kimberly With has been a member of ESA and the Theoretical Ecology Section since 1992. Dr. With is a two-time recipient of the “Outstanding Paper” award from the U.S. Regional Chapter of the International Association for Landscape Ecology (now IALE-North America) and was recognized as a Distinguished Landscape Ecologist in 2016, which is the highest honor bestowed by that organization….

Dr. Steward Pickett has been a member of ESA since 1972. A native of Louisville, KY, his work in several different fields in ecology have afforded him amazing research experiences in old growth forests, the Negev Desert, Kruger National Park in South Africa, Baltimore, and rapidly changing cities in China. In 2011, he became ESA’s first Black president. After some…

Anjali Boyd is a marine ecologist, educator, entrepreneur, and elected official. Anjali received her B.S. in Marine Science as an NOAA Hollings Scholar from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. She is currently a Duke University Ph.D. student and Dean’s Graduate Fellow in the Nicholas School of the Environment. Anjali’s research examines how species interactions (both intra and inter) and…

Dr. Tom Wentworth is a plant community ecologist and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology at North Carolina State University. He has been a member of ESA’s Panel for Vegetation Classification since 2016 and is also a member of its Executive Committee, which helps direct the panel’s priorities and activities. Since first joining ESA in 1974,…

Dr. Mark Vellend is a professor at the Université de Sherbrooke in Quebec and a 2020 ESA Fellow. Since the start of his career, Dr. Vellend has been interested in long-term changes in the composition and diversity of plant communities, especially the role of past human land use and ongoing climate change.  A 2013 meta-analysis that he was a part…

Dr. Monica G. Turner is the recipient of ESA’s Eminent Ecologist Award for 2020. After she received her PhD, Dr. Turner worked with Eugene Odum to examine changes in the Georgia landscape in one of the earliest U.S. landscape ecology studies. Afterwards, she went on to become a scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where she began working on…

Dr. Jennifer Funk is a Professor in the Schmid College of Science and Technology at Chapman University, where she has taught and mentored students for 13 years. She served as Chapman University’s Biology Program Director and Mentor for the Simon STEM Scholarship program for students facing difficult life and economic circumstances. She has been a board member and scientific advisor…

Dr. Drew Harvell is the 2020 recipient of the ESA Sustainability Science Award. She is the author of the new book, Ocean Outbreak: Confronting the Rising Tide of Marine Disease. Her book tackles a critical issue in sustainability science and human well-being: How to live in a world with increasing infectious disease. Specifically, she focuses on ocean health and how…

Dr. Fernando Maestre received his BsC and PhD in biology from the University of Alicante (Spain) in 1998 and 2002, respectively. He then did a postdoc at Duke University and moved in 2005 to Rey Juan Carlos University (Spain), and became a professor of ecology. In May of 2019, he joined the University of Alicante. Dr. Maestra is a distinguished…

Dr. Taylor Ricketts has spent 20 years studying ecology and economics of ecosystem services. He has looked at how they are produced by ecological systems and their functions, how benefits from these services flow to people and the worth of those benefits. Dr. Rickett’s career has spanned from the explosive growth of ecosystem services as a scientific and policy topic…

Dr. Jianguo “Jack” Liu is a human-environment scientist and a sustainability scholar. He also holds the Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability, is the director of the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, and is University Distinguished Professor of fisheries and wildlife, at Michigan State. Dr. Liu has been a member of ESA since 1989, and was elected as a Fellow…

Dr. Serita Frey has over 30 years of experience studying microbes in the environment as a microbial ecologist. She received her PhD in Ecology from Colorado Statue University and is a professor at the University of New Hampshire in the Department of Natural Resources and the environmental science program. This year, Dr. Frey was elected as an ESA Fellow. Dr….

Diego Vázquez is a biologist who has a focused interest in ecology, with an emphasis on community ecology, plant-animal interactions. He is a CONICET Principal Researcher at the Argentina Institute for Dryland Research in Mendoza, Argentina. He teaches ecology and conservation biology as an associate professor at the University of Cuyo. Diego is an associate editor of a few different…

Julieta Aranibar is ESA’s 2020 Robert H. Whittaker Travel Award winner. A truly international scientist, she traveled to different countries as part of her Ph.D. program at University of Virginia. Some of the places she traveled to were University of Botswana to the Kalahari desert. Here, she studied Biological Soil Crust communities that were formed by lichens, mosses, cyanobacteria, turning…

Erika Hersch-Green, PhD, is an evolutionary ecologist and an assistant professor of biological sciences at Michigan Tech. She has been a member of ESA since 2000 and has been a part of the Plant Population Section. Erika currently teaches courses in Ecology, Evolution, and Plant Sciences to undergraduate students. She studies the interaction between plants and their abiotic and biotic…

Dr. Nalini Nadkarni is a forest ecologist and professor of biology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Her research interests focus on the community and ecosystem ecology of rain forests, the ecological effects of forest loss and fragmentation, and enhancing conservation through interdisciplinary collaboration. Her research is supported by the National Science Foundation, The National Geographic Society,…