From the Smithsonian Museums
Erin R. Spear is a Staff Scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama, where she leads a Simons-Foundation-funded research program that intersects disease ecology (who gets sick from what, where, and why), mycology (the study of fungi), and community ecology (how different species and the environment interact to shape a community). Previously, she received a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Utah. She conducted her dissertation research in Panama as a STRI Short-Term and Predoctoral Fellow. She continued exploring how pathogenic fungi influence plant communities and, in turn, how plants influence fungal communities in California and Panama as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University and at STRI.
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