Chelsea Specht

Dr. Chelsea Specht is the Barbara McClintock Professor of Plant Biology and the Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.  She is a faculty member in the graduate fields of Plant Biology and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and a faculty fellow of the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.  She is also a member of the L.H. Bailey Hortorium and affiliated with the Cornell University Herbarium.  

Chelsea’s research and teaching focuses on plant diversity and the evolution of plant form and function. She and her students and postdocs use traditional morphological and developmental techniques combined with molecular genetics, comparative genomics and phylogenetics to study the natural diversity of plants and to help understand the forces creating and sustaining this diversity.  Her lab uses living and museum collections to advance their research in systematics, biogeography, population genetics, developmental evolution, and conservation. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation since 2006 and includes an NSF CAREER award as well various collaborative awards with researchers nationally and internationally.  She has an active lab with 5 current graduate students and 4 postdocs, all of whom engage in innovative research and demonstrate inclusive excellence through their commitments to fostering a diverse and inclusive academia.  

Chelsea moved from the University of California, Berkeley to join the Cornell faculty in July 2017.  At UC Berkeley she served as a Faculty Equity Advisor for the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology and served as Chair of the Academic Senate Committee on Diversity, Equity and Campus Climate.  She was also part of the University of California-wide task force on Transforming Graduate Admissions.  Since 2017 she has served as the president of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists and is currently the Director for Diversity Equity and Inclusion for the Botanical Society of America. She is very interested in the role of scientific societies as agents of change. Chelsea was named the inaugural Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion for CALS in July 2019 and has been working to define the role of this position and the mission for the CALS Office of Diversity and Inclusion ever since...