Melinda Smith – Professor, Biology

Dr. Melinda Smith is an outstanding, internationally recognized plant community/ecosystem ecologist, advancing the understanding of the effects of global change drivers on grassland communities and ecosystems across multiple continents. Her influential research has concentrated on elucidating the complex, interactive mechanisms that govern plant species’ responses to various factors, such as weather variability, fire, nutrient enrichment, and herbivory. Dr. Smith has had a substantial impact on the field of plant ecology and is among the top 1% of scholars doing similar research, all while maintaining an impressive amount of service to the university as well as the national and international community. Over her career, she has received over $16M in funding and published 220 peer reviewed papers, 1 book, and 6 book chapters, with over 34,000 citations and an h-index of 81. Her work has had broad and sustained impact well beyond CSU. This includes three invited New Phytologist Tansley Reviews published in the last four years. Tansley reviews are the journal’s flagship review series and are widely recognized across the plant science community. Dr. Smith is also the Founder and Leader of the Drought-Net Research Coordination Network, with 135 participating sites in 24 countries across the globe, the Founder and editor-in-chief of the journal Climate Change Ecology (2020-2021), Editor-in-chief of the journal Oecologia, and Associate editor for J. Plant Ecology and J. Ecology. Dr. Smith was elected Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2024 and elected Fellow, Ecological Society of America in 2017.