Draft:Carla Ann Staver

Carla Ann Staver (born January 17, 1984) is an American ecologist, an associate professor at Yale University and the Associate Director at the Yale Insititute for Biospheric Studies.

Education
Carla had her undergraduate education at Columbia University (2001-2005), where she obtained a B.A in Ecology,Evolution and Environmental Biology. She then pursued a Master of Science degree in Botany at the University of Cape Town,South Africa under William Bond. She went on to complete her doctoral studies at Princeton University under Simon A. Levin,where she was awarded a PhD in Ecology and Environmental Biology in 2012.

Research and Career
Carla is a fire ecologist whose research expertise is focused in savanna ecosystems, especially at the boundary between savanna and forest. She uses a combination of emprircal and modeling approaches to understand how local interactions of trees with their resource and disturbance environment (usually fire and herbivory) could predict regional and global patterns in tree cover and biome distribution. One of her notable works for which she is well-refernced is the concept of tropical forest and savanna bi-stability. The idea that under the same climatic envelope,tropical savannas and forests could exist as alternative stable states maintained by fire-vegetation feedback. Most of her early research focused in South Africa,but in recent years her work has expanded across South America including Brazil and Bolivia, and then Central and West Africa.

Following the completetion of her doctoral studies,she became a Prize Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University before joining Yale University in 2014. At Yale,she is an associate professor of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology,has a secondary appointment at Forestry and Environmental Studies and is currently the Asociate Director of Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies. She has authored over 80 peer-reviewed research publications and has received best paper and career acheivement awards from a range of professional societies including the Ecological Society of America,the American Society of Naturalists, and the British Ecological Society. She has been an editor for the Journal of Ecology and also reviewed for all the top journals in ecology. She also served on review panels for the US National Science Foundation as well as the European Research Council. In 2020,she testified to the US House of Representatives Natural Resource Committee.

Notable Awards and Honor

 * 2012 George Mercer Award, Ecological Soceity of America
 * 2013 Jasper Loftus-Hills Young Investigator Award,American Society of Naturalists
 * 2015-2020 Early Career Fellow,
 * 2017 Tansley Medal shortlist, New Phytologist Trust