Christine Goodale
Arts + Sciences / Ecology + Evolutionary Biology (PROF)
Christine Goodale is the Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Environmental Science in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology within the College of Arts and Sciences. At Cornell Atkinson, she serves as the inaugural Faculty Director for Student and Postdoc Programming, leading student programs and guiding the Research Fellows.
Goodale is an ecosystem ecologist, studying how carbon, water, and nutrients—especially nitrogen—cycle through forest ecosystems and affect processes such as forest carbon storage and catchment retention of nitrogen. She also examines how these processes are impacted by a range of human activities, including air pollution, climate change, and land-use change.
Goodale served as principal investigator for a multi-year National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) training grant. The program trained Cornell graduate students on the microbial- to global-scale drivers and feedbacks between climate change and biologically driven greenhouse gas fluxes, building on interdisciplinary measurement and modeling approaches as well as training in science communication. She is also an investigator at the Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study, home to collaborative and multidisciplinary research efforts, including long-term studies of air, water, soils, plants, and animals. Her research excellence, thought leadership, commitment to diversity and inclusion, and success in building innovative graduate and postdoctoral training align with this new Faculty Director role at the center.