People

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…