OCTF seminar followed by drinks – all welcome, no booking required

Sandra Díaz is a Distinguished Visiting Scientist and previously a Visiting Professor at the Environmental Change Institute and the School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University. She is a Professor of Community and Ecosystems Ecology at Córdoba National University and Senior Principal Researcher of the National Research Council of Argentina. She is a Foreign Member of the Academies of Sciences of the USA and France, and a Member of the Academies of Science of Argentina and the Developing World (TWAS). She has received several awards, including the J S Guggenheim Fellowship (2002), the Cozzarelli Prize of the USA National Academy of Sciences (2008), the Sustainability Science Award of the Ecological Society of America (2009) and the Interciencia Award of the Interciencia Association and the Canadian Government (2011). She participated in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the IPCC. She is now Co-Chair of the Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). She is interested in plant functional traits, and general patterns of plant specialisation, their interactions with global change drivers and their effects on ecosystem properties. She has had a strong influence in the 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. Recently she combines these interests with interdisciplinary work with sociologists, economists and philosophers. She leads and co-leads some international initiatives around plant functional diversity, ecosystems and their benefits to people, including the DiverSus Network and the TRY wordlwide communal plant trait database.