Christina M. Grozinger

Christina Grozinger is an American entomologist, the Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology at Pennsylvania State University Grozinger has carried out important research into the ways in which bee stressors affect bees, and how factors such as climate change, extreme weather, pathogens, parasites, pesticides, and nutritional deficiencies are affecting worldwide pollinator decline. In 2021, she received the National Academy of Sciences Prize in Food & Agriculture Sciences for her work.

Early life and education Grozinger was born in 1975 in Montreal, Canada. Her family emigrated to the United States in 1978, where she lived until she went back to Canada in 1993 to study at McGill University. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science from McGill University in 1997. She then attended Harvard University and obtained a masters and Ph.D. in chemical Biology in 1999 and 2001 respectively.

In 2004, she joined the Department of Entomology and Genetics at North Carolina State University as an assistant professor. In the United States, beekeepers reported that they lost 45 percent of colonies in the year from April 2020 to April 2021.

One of the areas Grozinger has studied is nutrition. Her group has determined that bee's resilience against diseases and pesticides is improved if they have access to high quality nutritional resources from multiple sources. Understanding bees’ nutritional needs is an important step towards pollinator habitat restoration and the improvement of beekeeping practices. Grozinger's group is screening flowering plant species for those that best support bee nutritional needs.

Assessing an area from the viewpoint of research-based bee nutrition makes it possible to create "ecologically functional landscapes". Bees benefit from a diverse plant community, in part because they show preferences for different plants throughout the growing season. Overall, perennial cultivars and native species tend to be preferable to annual cultivars. Cultivars can vary widely in their ability to support pollinators, in part because in breeding plants humans have focused on appearance and other factors rather than on pollinator nutrition. 2018, Fellow of the Entomological Society of America 2016, Distinguished Professor, Penn State University 2013, James I. Hambleton Award, Eastern Apicultural Society of North America 2008, National Science Foundation Early Career Development (CAREER) Award 2001, Beckman Fellow, Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation 1997-2000 National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship