[1] She is also adjunct professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution & Behavior at the University of Minnesota, where she served on the faculty for over two decades.
[2] Her research integrates evolutionary biology, ecology, and physiology by studying the functional traits of plants, with a particular focus on oaks.
[9] She is a leading researcher in the field of 'eco-phylogenetics' or 'community phylogenetics' (her review[10] has been cited over 2000 times), and organized a special issue of the journal Ecology on that topic.
She was lead principal investigator of the NSF/NASA Dimensions of biodiversity project "Linking remotely sensed optical diversity to genetic, phylogenetic and functional diversity to predict ecosystem processes"[19] and lead editor for the open access book Remote Sensing of Plant Biodiversity.
She was one of the coordinating lead authors of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report for the Americas.