Award of Excellence
2023 Winner: Nancy Grimm
Nancy Grimm, a Regents Professor and the Virginia M Ullman Professor of Ecology at Arizona State University, is an ecosystem ecologist who studies the interactions of climate change, human activities, resilience, and biogeochemical processes in urban and stream ecosystems. With colleagues and students, she investigated stream ecosystem processes and dynamics in the now-famous Sycamore Creek (Arizona, USA) for over 40 years and she currently supports active early-career groups testing hypotheses using Sycamore Creek and other arid land stream data. She co-directs the international network of networks, NATURA (NATure-based solutions for Urban Resilience in the Anthropocene) and the graduate scholars network, Earth Systems Science for the Anthropocene (ESSA). Her collaborative research in urban social-ecological-technological systems (SETS) centers on nature-based, technological, and governance solutions that can build resilience to a future with increased frequency and magnitude of extreme events. Grimm has made more than 200 collaborative contributions to the scientific literature in stream and urban ecology. She is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, the Ecological Society of America, and the Society for Freshwater Science. She is a past president of the Ecological Society of America and the Society for Freshwater Science, past program director for the U.S. National Science Foundation and senior scientist for the U.S. Global Change Research Program. She contributed as lead author to the third U.S. National Climate Assessment (2014) and has served on numerous national and international advisory boards, editorial boards, and panels.
About the Award
The SFS Award of Excellence is awarded to a single recipient for outstanding contributions to freshwater science. The scope of the award will reflect the broad interests and expertise exhibited in the Society. Read about previous winners here.