Sandra M. Díaz

Early life and education Díaz was born in Bell Ville in the province of Córdoba, Argentina. Her parents loved plants and she grew up in a home with big gardens.

Díaz attended the National University of Córdoba and graduated cum laude with a biology degree in 1984. She worked with Marcelo Cabido and Alicia Acosta on plant functional traits. Diaz also showed that slow-growing plants have a more positive feedback mechanism. She was a principal lead author to the chapter on "Rangelands in a Changing Climate: Impacts, Adaptations, and Mitigation" in the 1995 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Díaz founded the Núcleo DiverSus de Investigaciones en Diversidad y Sustentatibilidad.

She has played an important role in the development and implementation of functional biodiversity. This tool allows scientists to evaluate the effect of biodiversity of plants and its impact on ecosystems. Díaz was the first to provide a global picture of the functional diversity of vascular plants. She designed a database of tens of thousands of plants, using contributions of 135 scientists.

She explored functional trait diversity on plots of land, dividing vegetation into separate sections to simulate changes in climate and land use. She demonstrated that there exists a tradeoff in plant design between the fast acquisition of resources and the conservation of the resources in tissues. Plant designs can include the lifetime of their leaves, whether they grow quickly or slowly, how they reproduce and what kind of wood they have.

Díaz is also interested in the interaction between ecology and the social sciences, and looks at how societies value and support ecosystems She used this methodology in real-world systems, and assembled a team of social scientists and ecologists.

Clarivate Analytics reported that Díaz was one of the most highly cited environmental scientists in the world. She has been a Co-Chair of the Global Assessment of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The IPBES Global Assessment was carried out by more than 150 scientists worldwide.

Other activities In 2023, Díaz was appointed by United Nations Secretary General António Guterres to the United Nations' Scientific Advisory Board.

Recognition Díaz was listed as one of the ten people who mattered in science in 2019 by the journal Nature in their end of year review In 2023 she was one of the six women chosen by Nature to comment on their plans for International Women's Day. The others were Gihan Kamel, Martina Anto-Ocrah, Jess Wade, Aster Gebrekirstos and Tanya Monro.

Awards and honours Díaz' awards and honours include:

2008 Ecological Society of America Sustainability Award 2008 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) Cozzarelli Prize 2012 Inaugural Fellow of the Ecological Society of America 2013 Platinum Konex Award in Biology and Ecology 2014 Bernardo Houssay Award in Biological Sciences 2014 Honorary member award of the British Ecological Society (BES) 2017 Ramon Margalef Prize in Ecology 2018 Nominated by Nature's 10 as one of five ones to watch in 2019. 2019 Princess of Asturias Awards 2019 Elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) 2020 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category "Ecology and Conservation Biology". 2022 Elected an international member of the American Philosophical Society 2023 Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh Medal from the Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon 2023 Platinum Konex Award in Ecology and Environmental Sciences 2023 Diamond Konex Award in Science and Technology 2023 Linnean Medal awarded by the Linnean Society of London 2025 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement