Osvaldo Sala

Picture of Osvaldo Sala

Julie A. Wrigley and Foundation Professor, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University

Osvaldo Sala is the Julie A. Wrigley Professor at Arizona State University, where he contributes to both the School of Life Sciences and School of Sustainability. He came to ASU in 2010 from Brown University where he was the founding Director of the Environmental Change Initiative and the Sloan Lindemann Professor of Biology. Sala has explored several topics throughout his career from water controls on carbon and nitrogen dynamics in arid and semi-arid ecosystems to the consequences of changes in biodiversity on the functioning of ecosystems, including the development of biodiversity scenarios for the next 50 years. His work is reflected in more than 170 peer-reviewed publications and several edited books. Osvaldo Sala served in numerous international institutions and in different capacities from the Scientific Committee of Problems of the Environment (SCOPE), where he was the president, to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Sala has served as member of the Advisory Board to the Director of the National Science Foundation in issues of environmental research and education, editor of Global Change Biology, the president of the Argentinean Society of Ecology, and a member of the governing board of the Ecological Society of America. Osvaldo Sala is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Argentinean National Academy of Sciences, and the Argentinean National Academy of Physical and Natural Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.