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Professor Emerita of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut

Professor Chazdon is Professor Emerita in the Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Connecticut. She also is Professor of Tropical Forest Restoration at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia. She has been studying tropical forest ecology for more than 45 years.

Robin served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Biotropica, as President of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation, and as a member-at-large of the governing board of the Ecological Society of America and was the Executive Director of the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation from 2014-2019. She led the NSF-funded Research Coordination Network PARTNERS (People and Reforestation in the Tropics), focused on understanding the social and ecological drivers of reforestation in the tropics. She conducts collaborative research on tropical forest succession, assisted natural regeneration, and forest recovery from logging and disturbances.

Robin is actively engaged in the science, policy, and practice of forest and landscape restoration. She is a Senior Research Associate with the International Institute of Sustainability in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and a Senior Fellow with the World Resources Institute Global Restoration Initiative and currently works with the FAO Task Force on Best Practices for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. She also works as a consultant on Forest and Landscape Restoration around the world.

Robin joined the staff of the University of the Sunshine Coast in October 2016 and works with long-term studies of forest recovery following logging and silvicultural treatments in North Queensland. Robin is currently based within the Tropical Forests and People Research Centre.

Her research focuses on tropical forest regeneration and restoration.

Prior to coming to UConn she was a NSF Research Fellow in Environmental Biology at the Univ. California-Berkeley, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Carnegie Institution of Washington, Dept. of Plant Biology, Stanford, CA (with C.B. Field), and a Postdoctoral Research Botanist, Univ. California-Davis (with R. W. Pearcy). Professor Chazdon received a B.A. in Biology from Grinnell College, Iowa and a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Cornell University. She recently published a book entitled “Second growth: The promise of tropical forest regeneration in an age of deforestation.”

Experience

  • –present
    Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut

Honours

Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher 2018; Woman of Innovation Award in Research Innovation and Leadership, Connecticut Technology Council 2014; Elected member, Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering 2012; Honors Faculty of the Year 2005; Provost’s Award for Excellence in Research 2004; President's Medal British Ecological Society, 2003