PELLSTON, Mich. — The leader of the University of Michigan’s 10,000-acre research and teaching campus in northern Michigan has been elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Dr. Aimée Classen, director of the University of Michigan Biological Station and a professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, is being honored for her transformative research that advances both fundamental knowledge regarding ecosystems and pursuit of a sustainable future, as well as exemplary leadership.
An ecosystem and global change ecologist who explores how ecological interactions influence the atmosphere’s carbon cycling process, Classen is one of 502 Fellows elected this year for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements.
“I am honored to be elected a Fellow, but this honor is shared with all the students and collaborators I’ve had the opportunity to work with including those at our historic field station along Douglas Lake in northern Michigan,” Classen said. “We are thrilled to have a spotlight shining on the critical research happening at UMBS in our second century of operations. Together, students and scientists help forecast how organisms, populations, communities and ecosystems will function in the future and how we can envision the future we want to see under global change.”
Founded in 1848, the AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and publisher of the journal Science. Becoming an AAAS Fellow is one of the highest honors in the field of science.
Classen, who joined UMBS in 2021, studies how global changes impact ecosystems — from soil food webs to regional carbon fluxes — at local, regional and global scales.
Her diverse, international laboratory group uses a combination of observations, experiments and models to explore the influence of climate change on biodiversity in ecosystems spanning wetlands to mountain tops around the world. Recently the Classen group has been exploring how changes in winter — snowpack, freeze-thaw events and nutrient transport — impact terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.
Prior to joining U-M, Classen was a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Vermont, associate professor at the University of Copenhagen, associate professor at the University of Tennessee and a staff scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
She serves on the executive committee of the U-M Graham Institute and as a board member of Collaborative Earth. Classen also is an editorial committee member for the “Annual Reviews of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics” and a member of the science advisory board for the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Classen received her Ph.D. in biology from Northern Arizona University in 2004 and her bachelor’s degree in biological science from Smith College in 1995.
Classen is the first woman to serve as director of UMBS since its founding in 1909. UMBS Alumna Linda Greer served as interim dean from 2016-2017.
Classen joins nine previous UMBS directors who were elected as AAAS fellows, a lifetime honor, during their scientific careers: Dr. Jacob Reighard, 1904; Dr. Henry Allan Gleason, 1909; Dr. Otto Glaser, 1910; Dr. Alfred Stockard, 1933; Dr. Frederick Sparrow, 1945; Dr. David Gates, 1959; Dr. James Teeri, 1984; Dr. Paul Webb, 1983; and Dr. Knute Nadelhoffer, 2019.
Classen and the other new AAAS Fellows in the 2023 cohort will be honored at an event in Washington, D.C., in September, followed with a gala celebrating the 150th anniversary of the AAAS Fellows program.
"As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the AAAS Fellows, this year’s class embodies scientific excellence, fosters trust in science throughout the communities they serve, and leads the next generation of scientists while advancing scientific achievements,” said Dr. Sudip S. Parikh, AAAS chief executive officer and executive publisher of the Science family of journals.
Eligible nominees are members whose efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications are scientifically or socially distinguished and who have been continuous AAAS members for at least four years leading up to the year of nomination. Fellows have included Thomas Edison, W.E.B DuBois, Maria Mitchell, Steven Chu, Ellen Ochoa, and Irwin M. Jacobs.
Founded in 1909, UMBS is one of the nation’s largest and longest continuously operating field research stations.
Laboratories and cabins are tucked in along Douglas Lake to support long-term climate research and education.
The core mission of the Biological Station is to advance environmental field research, engage students in scientific discovery and provide information needed to understand and sustain ecosystems from local to global scales. In this cross-disciplinary, interactive community, students, faculty and researchers from around the globe come together to learn about and from the natural world and seek solutions to the critical environmental challenges of our time.
