Dr. Kristy Ferraro is an assistant professor at SEAS and a member of the Institute for Global Change Biology. She is an ecosystem ecologist and conservation ethicist whose research spans biogeochemistry, animal ecology, and philosophy.

Using theory, empirical field research, and agent-based models, she studies how mammals influence biodiversity and elemental cycling, and how animal-driven ecosystem changes feed back to affect the animals themselves. She is also interested in linking animal behavior and movement to patterns of ecosystem heterogeneity and function. In doing so, she assesses how changes to animal communities, including both species loss and reintroduction, reshape ecosystem processes. Much of her work is situated in boreal and temperate systems, where strong seasonality, migration, and environmental change tightly couple animal populations and ecosystem processes.

In parallel, Dr. Ferraro investigates how values influence ecological research and conservation decisions, with the goal of making science more transparent and accountable. In doing so, she interrogates values in the field and identifies where they shape scientific workflows, including problem framing, methodologies, and management recommendations.

Dr. Ferraro has won several awards for her work, including the British Ecological Society’s Georgina Mace Prize and the Yale Boreman Prize.