Emily Bernhardt
Dr. Emily S. Bernhardt is the Francis J. DiSalvo Director of the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability and a professor in the Ashley School of Global Development and the Environment at Cornell University. An ecosystem ecologist, she focuses her research on how human activities reshape freshwater ecosystems, particularly the ways land use, climate change, and energy development affect water quality, nutrient cycling, and the health of rivers, streams, and wetlands.
Her work combines field experiments, long-term monitoring, and large-scale data analysis to understand how environmental change alters aquatic ecosystems. She is widely recognized for research on nutrient dynamics and carbon cycling in rivers and streams, as well as for studies documenting the environmental impacts of mountaintop mining and other forms of resource extraction. Her research has helped inform watershed management, environmental policy, and restoration efforts across the United States, and has been primarily funded by federal grants from the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, and NASA.
Bernhardt has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications and is a co-author of “Biogeochemistry: An Analysis of Global Change,” the leading reference text in the field of biogeochemistry. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Geophysical Union, the Ecological Society of America, and the Society for Freshwater Science. She was selected as a Leopold Leadership Program fellow and a Humboldt Foundation fellow in 2015, and served as a Fulbright specialist on assignment to Waikato University in New Zealand in 2024.
Prior to Cornell, she served as the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Biology and chair of the Department of Biology at Duke University. During her two decades on the faculty at Duke, Bernhardt contributed to a range of faculty leadership and advisory efforts that support interdisciplinary research and graduate education. Most recently, she designed and led Duke’s University Course on Climate Change and has been a member of the senior advisory team for Duke’s Climate Commitment.
She has also played important leadership roles within the scientific community, including serving as past president of the Society for Freshwater Science and current president of the biogeosciences section of the American Geophysical Union. She has previously served on the boards of the Southeast Region of Environmental Defense, the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, and the North Carolina chapter of The Nature Conservancy.
Bernhardt received her undergraduate degree in biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and her Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from Cornell University. She is married to Justin Wright, who will join Cornell University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in January 2027.