Mercedes Pascual

Education Pascual was born in Uruguay and grew up in Argentina and Brazil. Her father was a chemical engineer.

Pascual earned her Ph.D. in biological oceanography from a joint program of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, attending from 1989 to 1995. She did postdoctoral work at Princeton University from 1995 to 1997. She was an associate professor from 2004 to 2008, and the Rosemary Grant Collegiate Professor from 2008 to 2014. In addition, Pascual was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator from 2008 to 2015. As of 2015, Pascual became a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago.

Awards and honors In 1996, Pascual received the U.S. Department of Energy Alexander Hollaender Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship to study at Princeton University. She received a Centennial fellowship from the James S. McDonnell Foundation in 1999. In 2002, Discover magazine recognized Pascual as one of the 50 most important women in science. Pascual received the 2014 Robert H. MacArthur Award from the Ecological Society of America. She was elected a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America in 2015. In 2019, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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