Diane Pataki
Director and Professor
School of Sustainability
Arizona State University
1151 S Forest Ave
Tempe, AZ 85281
diane.pataki@asu.edu

Committee term end date: December 31, 2024

Dr. Diane E. Pataki is a Foundation Professor and Director of the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University (ASU). Prior to joining ASU, she was most recently Associate Vice President for Research, a Professor of Biological Sciences, and an Adjunct Professor of City & Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah.   She received a B.A. in environmental science at Barnard College and an M.S. and Ph.D. at the Duke Nicholas School of the Environment. Dr. Pataki’s work has spanned the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, the use of stable isotopes to study coupled human and natural processes related to urban CO2 emissions, and the impacts of urban vegetation on local climate, pollution, and hydrology. Her work is focused on improving mechanistic understanding of the interactions between vegetation, the physical environment, and urban planning, forestry, and design. Her lab utilizes methods from plant physiological ecology, ecosystem science, and bioclimatology to measure the impacts of urban landscapes on urban climate, pollution, atmospheric chemistry, and human thermal comfort and well-being. Dr. Pataki is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Ecological Society of America, a Leopold Leadership Fellow, a Fulbright Global Scholar, and the Vice President for Science of the Ecological Society of America. She has previously served as a Program Director in the NSF Division of Environmental Biology.