Ellen Damschen, professor of conservation biology and ecology, an ecologist and professor of integrative biology, studies what determines plant community diversity and how global change affects plant communities. She is interested in how local and regional ecological processes affect species diversity with a particular emphasis on how human-induced global changes affect their relative importance. Her approach lies at the intersection of basic and applied ecology, using long-term datasets and large-scale experiments from terrestrial plant communities to test basic theory with relevance to applied conservation management. She is a former recipient of the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award for Inclusive Excellence, was named an Ecological Society of America Fellow for her pioneering research in basic ecology and applied plant conservation and received an Outstanding Paper in Landscape Ecology from the International Association of Landscape Ecology. Her work has been widely published and featured in New York Times and on National Public Radio.