Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; Curator of Botany at the Peabody Museum of Natural History; Director of Marsh Botanical Gardens
Erika Edwards joined Yale in 2017 as Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. She currently serves as Curator of Botany in the Peabody Museum of Natural History, as Director of Graduate Studies in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and as Director of Marsh Botanical Garden.
Edwards earned her undergraduate degree from Stanford University (1998) and her Ph.D. from Yale University (2005). She spent two years as a post-doctoral research associate at University of California, Santa Barbara, and joined the faculty at Brown University in 2007. She remained at Brown for ten years (2007-2017) where she also served as Director of the Brown University Herbarium (2008-2017). Edwards has been an Associate Editor at multiple scientific journals (Systematic Biology, International Journal of Plant Sciences, American Journal of Botany), served as Advisory Council Chair for the Botanical Society of America (2016-2019), and is currently President of the Society of Systematic Biologists. In 2016 Edwards received the Presidential Award for Early Career Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from President Obama. Her research focuses on various problems in plant evolution, and integrates across many types of biological data, from molecules to global climate, to build a complete picture of how and why plants have evolved such a diverse array of forms. She has published nearly 100 scientific papers and mentored over 25 students and postdoctoral associates.