About Dr. Grimm:
Nancy B. Grimm is an ecosystem ecologist/biogeochemist at Arizona State University (ASU), USA. She earned her BA (1978) from Hampshire College in Massachusetts and M.S. (1980) and Ph.D. (1985) from ASU, and has held research scientist and faculty positions at the latter institution since 1990. She is currently Professor of Life Sciences and Leader of the Ecology, Evolution, and Environment Science faculty. Grimm's research asks how landscape heterogeneity and climate variability influence retention, cycling, and transport of nitrogen, both in desert and urban landscapes. Grimm is Lead Principal Investigator and Co-Director of the Central Arizona-Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) project, a study of the Phoenix metropolis and surroundings that is one of the first comprehensive investigations of an urban ecosystem. In that capacity, Grimm oversees and coordinates interdisciplinary research in urban ecology involving over 100 scientists in many disciplines. She is a believer in interdisciplinary approaches to answering fundamental ecological questions, collaborating with hydrologists, engineers, geologists, chemists, sociologists, geographers, and anthropologists (among others) in her urban and stream studies. Grimm has published ~110 research articles and book chapters with students and colleagues, and has received over $25M in collaborative research and training awards, mostly from the National Science Foundation.
From 1993-1998, Grimm directed ASU's Undergraduate Mentorship in Environmental Biology program, which aimed to increase participation in the field of ecology by students from underrepresented groups. She has mentored 42 graduate scholars, 29 post-doctoral scholars, and 41 undergraduate research scholars. She has served on numerous advisory panels and review teams for the US National Science Foundation and other US federal agencies and is currently member of the Board of Directors for NEON and an external advisor for several European projects and institutions. She currently is an assigning editor for Ecological Applications and an editor for Ecohydrology; past editorial board service includes Ecology, Ecological Monographs, Ecosystems, Journal of the North American Benthological Society, and Ecology Letters. She has been president of the Ecological Society of America, member of the governing board for the US Council of Scientific Society Presidents, president of the North American Benthological Society, chair of the Science Advisory Board for the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, member of the National Research Council's Committee on Hydrologic Sciences, and member of the Ecological Society of America's Research committee. She received the honors of distinguished ecologist at Colorado State University and Utah State University, Kaeser Visiting Scholar at the University of Wisconsin, and the first Minshall lecturer at Idaho State University. In February 2010, she was awarded the ASU Faculty Achievement Award for Research which recognizes Dr. Grimm's contributions to the field of urban ecology.