Lúcia Garcez Lohmann

Lúcia Garcez Lohmann is a Brazilian botanist specialized in neotropical biodiversity, with an emphasis on plant ecology and evolution in the Amazon Basin. She is President of the Missouri Botanical Garden and George Engelmann Professor Botany at Washington University in St. Louis.

Early life and education Lohmann was born in Brazil. She completed her undergraduate degree in biological sciences at the University of São Paulo (USP) in 1995. Her undergraduate thesis focused on the Bignoniaceae family from the Serra do Cipó in Minas Gerais. Elizabeth A. Kellogg and Peter F. Stevens were her doctoral advisors. In July 2023, she became the director of the herbaria at the University of California, Berkeley and a professor in the department of integrative biology. At UCB, her research has remained focused on neotropical biodiversity, with an emphasis on plant ecology and evolution in the Amazon Basin.

In 2024, after an international search, Lohmann was selected to succeed Peter Wyse Jackson as the president of the Missouri Botanical Garden, a role she assumed in January 2025. She is the eighth president in the Missouri Botanical Garden’s 165-year history and the first woman to hold the position. In addition, she is the George Engelmann Professor of Botany at Washington University in St. Louis.