Diana Harrison Wall is the Founding Director of the School of Global Environmental Sustainability, a Distinguished Biology Professor, and Senior Research Scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. She is an environmental scientist and a soil ecologist and her research has focussed on the AntarcticMcMurdo Dry Valleys. Wall investigates ecosystem processes, soil biodiversity and ecosystem services and she is interested in how these are impacted by global change. The Wall Valley was named after her in recognition of her research in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Wall is a globally recognised leader and speaker on life in Antarctica and climate change.
Early life and education
Wall was born in North Carolina where she attended high school. After graduating high school she moved to Lexington, Kentucky for undergraduate college. Her interest in nematodes began during her undergraduate degree when she worked on nematode parasites in horses and birds. She completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology at the University of Kentucky. She also completed her PhD on plant pathology from the University of Kentucky in 1971.
Career and impact
Wall began work as a postdoctoral researcher at University of California-Riverside in 1972 where she began researching the function and biological diversity of soil ecosystems. In 1976 she began work in the Department of Nematology as an Assistant Research Nematologist. She continued to work at UC-Riverside for a further seventeen years before becoming a Professor in the Department of Nematology. Throughout this period, she was the Associate Director of the Drylands Research Institute for two years the Associate Program Director of the National Science Foundation in Washington, DC for one year. Wall began working at Colorado State University in 1993. At this time she became a Professor in the Department of Forest, Rangeland, and Watershed Stewardship, the Associate Dean for Research in the Natural Resources College and the Director of the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory. Wall became a Professor in the Department of Biology at CSU in 2006 and was key in establishing the School of Global Environmental Sustainability at CSU in 2008. Wall began working in Antarctica's Dry Valleys in 1989. Since then she has conducted long-term soil ecology research in this region. Her work has changed our understanding of soil ecology in the Antarctic by drawing links between soil process and diversity to environmental conditions above the ground. Wall has described invertebrate soil communities in the Dry Valleys of Victoria Land and hers were among the first models of habitat suitability for specific invertebrate species in the Dry Valleys. Wall has held the position of President of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the Ecological Society of America, the Association of Ecosystem Research Centers and the Society of Nematologists. Wall was also the Chair of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents in 2003. Wall was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
