

Sandra M Durán, Assistant Professor Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship Colorado State University (Sandra.Duran@colostate.edu)
I am originally from Colombia, and thus I have always been fascinated by the incredible biodiversity present in tropical regions, as such much of my research has been conducted in the tropics. I am a plant ecologist interested in understanding how plant biodiversity changes across environmental gradients, and how those changes affect ecosystem processes and functions. Specifically, my work focuses on developing new methods and elaborating theory for how functional traits can be used to “scale up” from individual to communities and ecosystems.

Johanna A. Martínez-Villa PhD student, Université du Québec à Montréal (co-supervisor)
joamartinezvi@unal.edu.co
I am from Colombia, I obtained my undergraduate degree in Forestry Engineering and a master in Forest and Environmental conservation at the National University of Colombia-Medellín. Currently, I am pursuing a doctoral degree in biology. My research focuses on the effect of climate change and environmental variation on the structure, functioning, and diversity of hyper-diverse tropical forests. I use a trait-based ecology framework to test prominent questions on how tree species will respond to climate changes and anthropogenic disturbances.