Sandra Díaz

Sandra Díaz is Professor of Community and Ecosystem Ecology at Córdoba National University, and Investigador Superior (the highest academic position in the Argentine National Research Council, CONICET). She is the founder and director of the international initiative Núcleo DiverSus on Diversity and Sustainability. She is interested in plant functional traits and general patterns of functional specialization, their interactions with global change drivers and their effects on ecosystem properties. She has had a strong influence in the theoretical development and practical implementation of the concept of functional diversity and how it affects ecosystem properties and the benefits that different people derive from them. She has authored more than 150 scientific publications, many of them in leading academic journals, and is among the world’s most cited authors in her field. She is a member of the Academies of Science of Argentina, USA, France, and the Developing World (TWAS), an Honorary Fellow of the British Ecological Society and a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America. She is a co-founder and co-leader of TRY, the Global Communal Plant Trait Initiative. She has been awarded a number of international distinctions, such as the Cozzarelli Prize 2008 of the USA National Academy of Sciences, and the 2017 Margalef Prize for Ecology of the Generalitat de Catalunya. She has served in leading positions in IPCC the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and DIVERSITAS, and the ICSU integrated science initiative Future Earth. She was a member of the Multidisciplinary Expert Panel of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), where she has had a prominent role in leading the IPBES Conceptual Framework. At the moment she is Co-Chair of the IPBES Global Assessment.