Catherine Harvell

Drew Harvell is a professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University. She is widely recognized for her work on marine diseases, chairing both the World Bank Targeted Research Program on Coral Disease and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis program on the Ecology of Marine Disease. Dr. HarvellÕs laboratory group studies the ecology and evolution of coral resistance to disease, with a focus on physiological and genomics approaches to immunity. A subtheme of this work includes evaluating the impacts of a warming climate on coral reef ecosystems. Her analyses and papers have led to the now widespread acceptance that infectious diseases in marine ecosystems are important, particularly in very climate- sensitive coral reef ecosystems. Projects in her lab involve a variety of approaches, including field studies, molecular techniques, chemical analyses and mathematical modeling. She has worked for many years on coral reefs in the Mexican Yucatan and Florida Keys and more recently in the Indo-pacific. Her work has been featured in national and international media. Dr. Harvell received her PhD from the University of Washington in 1985. Following NATO and NSF postdoctoral fellowships in 1986, she joined the faculty of Cornell University in 1986. She has been a sabbatical fellow at National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis and Vice President of the Society of American Naturalists and serves on the editorial board of Annual Reviews of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics.