Biography
Diane Pataki
Chief Scientist, Vice President for Science
National Wildlife Federation
PO Box 1583
Merrifield, VA 22116
patakid@nwf.org
Committee term end date: December 31, 2024
Diane Pataki serves as the chief scientist and vice president for science for the National Wildlife Federation. Trained as an ecologist, her work has spanned the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, the role of human and biological processes in air and water resources and interactions between urbanization, landscape management and biodiversity. Her recent projects have been focused on nature-based solutions for sustainable cities and communities.
Pataki has a bachelor's in environmental science from Barnard College and a master's and doctoral degrees in ecology from Duke University. She is the former director of the Arizona State University (ASU) School of Sustainability, the founder and former Chief Strategy Officer of the ASU-led NSF Southwest Sustainability Innovation Engine, and a foundation professor in the ASU School of Sustainability. She has also served as the associate vice president for research, associate dean and professor of biology at the University of Utah and was the founding director of the University of California, Irvine Center for Environmental Biology and the Steele-Burnand Anza Borrego Desert Research Center.