Yolanda Fanslow Chen
Professor
Faculty Fellow, Gund Institute for Environment
63 Carrigan Drive
209 Jeffords Hall
Burlington, VT 05405
United States
- Ph.D., Dept. of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, 2001
- B.S., Natural Resource Management, Rutgers University, NJ 1995
Area(s) of expertise
- Insect Ecology
- Population Genetics
- Agroecology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Insect-plant Interactions,
- Evolution
- Epigenetics
- Ecological Pest Management
BIO
Yolanda grew up in the Mid-west and East Coast of the US, where she developed a concern around human impacts on the natural world. For her undergraduate degree, she majored in Natural Resource Management at Rutgers University. As an undergraduate student, she helped start the two-acre Cook College Student Organic Farm, where she co-managed a group of student volunteers. While on the farm, she developed an interest in agroecology, insect-plant interactions, and evolutionary ecology. For her Ph.D., she studied the role of crop domestication in altering tritrophic interaction at UC Berkeley. In following her interests to understand how the origin of agriculture shapes the origin of insects as pests, she did a postdoc in population genetics of an invasive fly. In order to understand the role of science in sustainable development, she worked as an Entomologist studying host plant resistance at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, where she stayed for four years. She returned to the US to start a position at University of Vermont, where she has held the position of Associate Professor since 2015.
Humans have strongly influenced insect pest evolution and ecology through host shifts, crop domestication, change in cultivation practices, and human-mediated translocations. Her research studies these themes to determine how we can use ecological and evolutionary information to improve sustainable pest management.
Courses
- PSS 106 Entomology and Pest Management
- PSS 232 Biological Control
- PSS 296/396 Ecological Frontiers in Agroecology
Publications
Bio
Yolanda grew up in the Mid-west and East Coast of the US, where she developed a concern around human impacts on the natural world. For her undergraduate degree, she majored in Natural Resource Management at Rutgers University. As an undergraduate student, she helped start the two-acre Cook College Student Organic Farm, where she co-managed a group of student volunteers. While on the farm, she developed an interest in agroecology, insect-plant interactions, and evolutionary ecology. For her Ph.D., she studied the role of crop domestication in altering tritrophic interaction at UC Berkeley. In following her interests to understand how the origin of agriculture shapes the origin of insects as pests, she did a postdoc in population genetics of an invasive fly. In order to understand the role of science in sustainable development, she worked as an Entomologist studying host plant resistance at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines, where she stayed for four years. She returned to the US to start a position at University of Vermont, where she has held the position of Associate Professor since 2015.
Humans have strongly influenced insect pest evolution and ecology through host shifts, crop domestication, change in cultivation practices, and human-mediated translocations. Her research studies these themes to determine how we can use ecological and evolutionary information to improve sustainable pest management.
Courses
- PSS 106 Entomology and Pest Management
- PSS 232 Biological Control
- PSS 296/396 Ecological Frontiers in Agroecology
Publications
Associations and Affiliations
- Colorado Potato Beetle Genome Project co-coordinator
- Entomological Society of America
- Society for the Study of Evolution
- Consortium for Crop Genetic Heritage