From left: Evelyn Beaury, Ph.D., Ana María Bedoya, Ph.D., Aleca Borsuk, Ph.D., and JianJun Jin, Ph.D.

“I am thrilled to share the exciting news of the expansion of our NYBG Science staff. These talented young scientists bring new areas of expertise to our team. Their contributions will play a vital role in shaping, along with the rest of the team, the future of NYBG Science and furthering our impact on environmental action.”—Mauricio Diazgranados, Ph.D., Chief Science Officer and Dean of NYBG Science

Four scientists will join NYBG’s world-class plant research staff as Assistant Curators in 2024, with a fifth Assistant Curator arriving in 2025. These new scientists bring a diverse range of expertise to advance the work of NYBG Science to find actionable, nature-based solutions to Earth’s dual climate and biodiversity crises. Among the research specialties of the new scientists are invasive plant and global change ecology, the evolutionary biology of aquatic plants, plant structure and function, and computational biology. Our scientists work locally, nationally, and globally to document, understand, and protect the plants and fungi on our world to help nature thrive so that humanity can thrive.

We are excited to welcome the following Assistant Curators later this year:

Evelyn Beaury, Ph.D. is an invasive plant and global change ecologist motivated by creative and actionable research projects that address knowledge gaps and stakeholder needs in conservation science. In her research, Dr. Beaury uses spatial quantitative approaches to study the major drivers of biodiversity loss and their interactions, particularly the spread of invasive plants, climate change, and habitat loss due to land use change. She is most excited about research that simultaneously addresses exciting scientific questions and applied needs in environmental management and policy. Dr. Beaury received a B.A. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Colorado and a Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst

Ana María Bedoya, Ph.D. is a plant systematist and evolutionary biologist focusing on plants living in aquatic ecosystems, like river-rapids and waterfalls. She investigates the impact of landscape change on the evolution of Neotropical plants. Through field work and research in herbaria, she incorporates genomic, morphological, and anatomical data with modern analytical tools to investigate macroevolutionary patterns and the evolutionary processes that underlie these patterns at the population level. Dr. Bedoya has a B.Sc. in Biology and M.Sc. in Biological Sciences from the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia and completed her Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Washington.

Aleca Borsuk, Ph.D. is a plant ecophysiologist with a background in botany and engineering. Dr. Borsuk studies plant functional morphology across Earth’s diverse environments to understand how leaf anatomy promotes carbon assimilation, provides resilience to abiotic stress, and informs sustainable technologies that derive function from structure. Dr. Borsuk’s approach uses recent innovations in three-dimensional imaging and computer modeling combined with benchtop experiments, field work, and greenhouse studies to uncover the mechanistic basis of nature’s ‘living materials.’ Dr. Borsuk received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, with a minor in Botany, from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and a master’s degree in Environmental Science and Ph.D. from the Yale School of the Environment.

JianJun Jin, Ph.D. specializes in plant systematics, genomics, and computational biology. He primarily focuses on exploring plant diversity and developing innovative methodologies to advance our understanding of the field. Dr. Jin investigates both theoretical and practical questions about how biodiversity originates and is maintained, and how to quantify it. This involves the development of new models, methods, and software tools that contribute to the broader biodiversity research community. Dr. Jin has a B.S. in Biology from Jilin University (Changchun, China) and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Chinese Academy of Science (Beijing) and Kunming Institute of Botany.

Learn more about NYBG Science and stay up to date on NYBG’s latest efforts in the field.