Sandra Díaz

Sandra Díaz is Professor of Ecology at the National University of Cordoba (Argentina) and Senior Researcher (Investigadora Superior) at the Argentine National Research Council. Trained as an ecologist, she is interested in the functional characteristics and syndromes of plants, their effects on ecosystem properties, their contribution to human quality of life and their interactions with global climate change factors. She has established the world's first quantitative picture of the essential functional diversity of vascular plants, i.e. the global spectrum of plant forms and functions. She has advanced the theory and practical implementation of the concept of functional diversity and its effects on ecosystem properties and population benefits. She combines her studies in ecology with interdisciplinary work on how different societies value and reconfigure nature, having pioneered transformative conceptual frameworks fostering pluralistic collaborations in environmental knowledge and action, including the influential notion of nature's contributions to people.

She co-founded the global TRY initiative on common plant traits. She co-chaired the global assessment of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Servicess and played a major role in the expert scientific advice to the Kunming-Montreal Global Framework for Biodiversity.

She is a Fellow of the British Royal Society, the American Philosophical Society, the Academies of Science of Argentina, the USA, Norway, Latin America and the Developing World, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She has received several international scientific awards, including the Margalef Prize in Ecology (2017), the Gunnerus Prize for Sustainable Development (2019), the Senckenberg Prize for Nature Research (2019), the Princess of Asturias Prize for Scientific and Technological Research (2019), the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award (2021), medals from the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew (2020) and Edinburgh (2023) and the Linnean Society (2023), as well as the Tyler Award for Environmental Achievement (2025).

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Updated 05/02/2026