User:ERBHE/sandbox/Liza Comita

Liza Comita is an Associate Professor of Tropical Forest Ecology at the School of Forestry and Environmental Science of Yale University. Her research focuses largely on the ecological mechanisms that drive patterns of species dynamics, distribution, and diversity in natural and anthropogenically-modified tropical forests.

Early life & education
Dr. Comita received a M.A. in Conservation Biology and a B.A. in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999. She subsequently earned her Ph.D. in Plant Biology from the University of Georgia in 2006. She held postdoctoral positions at the University of Minnesota (2006-2007), the Earth Institute at Columbia University (2007-2009), and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (2009). Comita was previously employed as an assistant professor in the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology at the Ohio State University (2011-2014). She joined the faculty at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in 2014.

Publications
Dr. Comita has published over 95 scholarly articles with over 6,900 citations in peer-reviewed academic journals such as Nature, Science, and Ecology Letters.

- Her research addresses how spatial and temporal variation in survival at early life-stages affects tropical forest tree community structure (diversity and abundance).

- She combines field studies of forest dynamics with statistical techniques to provide insight into the processes driving forest structure and regeneration.

Her research considers tropical tree ecology and how variation in regeneration dynamics maintains biodiversity and determines species composition.

Memberships
FFF

Can I use her CV as a reference? Probably not...

Public engagement and activism
- More about Comita's work with Women in Science at Yale (WISAY) at this link

Honors & awards
- She received the British Ecological Society Founders' Prize in December, 2017.

- The prize is awarded to candidates who have made a "significant contribution to our understanding of ecology or its application, as evidenced by a strong publications record in the ecological research literature, invitations to speak at national conferences and similar marks of achievement and esteem."

- She is an active mentor in the Women in Science at Yale program, for which she won the Yale Postdoctoral Mentoring Prize in 2016.

- In 2015, Comita was awarded an Early Career Fellowship by the Ecological Society of America.