Blaire Van Valkenburgh is an American paleontologist and holds the Donald R. Dickey Chair in Vertebrate Biology in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of California Los Angeles.
Van Valkenburgh was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Alexandria, Virginia.
Her mother, Lois Van Valkenburgh, was a civil rights activist.
[5][6] Van Valkenburgh received a bachelor's degree from Stockton State College in New Jersey in 1974,[4] a Ph.D. in Vertebrate Paleobiology from Johns Hopkins University in 1984, where she worked with Robert Bakker,[4] after which she worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Alan Walker at Johns Hopkins[7] before moving to UCLA in 1986.
[8][9] She has served as chair of the department and as associate dean of academic programs in the life sciences at UCLA.The focus of her research is the paleobiology and paleoecology of Carnivora.