Elizabeth Hadly

Elizabeth Hadly

Dr. Elizabeth A. Hadly is Paul S. & Billie Achilles Professor of Environmental Biology and Faculty Director of Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve at Stanford University. She also holds appointments as Mr. and Mrs. Frank W. Yeung University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment, and Senior Fellow, Center for Innovation in Global Health, Stanford School of Medicine. She was Senior Associate Vice Provost for undergraduate education in 2013-16.

Elizabeth Hadly is a global change scientist who has studied the impacts of environmental change for four decades in the fields of ecology, evolution, population biology and genomics.  Addressing organismal biology from both evolutionary and ecological perspectives, she studies primarily extant species to understand the past, present, and future of biodiversity. Liz combines field and laboratory approaches to examine how ecological perturbations link or decouple levels of biological organization.  Understanding relationships between ecosystems, species, populations, and genes is central to understanding how organisms exist, evolve, and become extinct.  Uniquely, Liz focuses on the decadal to millennial time scale, increasingly important in understanding the Anthropocene.

Liz seeks to reach outside the ivory tower to address issues related to climate change, disease, pollution, extinction, habitat loss, and human population growth. In 2012 Governor Jerry Brown contacted Liz and her co-author Anthony Barnosky to translate the findings of their Nature paper for a general audience. Approaching a State Shift in Earth’s Biosphere  was the culmination of work by 22 biologists from the United States, Chile, Finland, and Spain, and warned that anthropogenic activities are ratcheting up negative impacts on Earth system functioning.  Liz worked to produce an accessible document, “Scientific Consensus on Maintaining Humanity’s LifeSupport System in the 21st Century: Information for Policy Makers,” which Brown subsequently disseminated around the world.  In 2016, Liz co-authored her first book (with Barnosky): Tipping Point for Planet Earth:  How Close are We to the Edge?

She is currently supported as an HHMI Professor to develop a new immersive ecology field course with a primary objective of bringing more under-represented minorities into the field.

Liz earned her PhD in Integrative Biology from UC Berkeley, a Masters from Northern Arizona University in Quaternary Studies, and a BA in Anthropology from University of Colorado, Boulder.