Aimée Classen is the Director of the U-M Biological Station at the University of Michigan. She is fascinated by biodiversity, especially microbial diversity in soils and plants, and her group explores how ecosystems function using a variety of observational, experimental and modeling approaches. Aimée received her PhD from Northern Arizona University in 2004 and her BA from Smith College in 1995.

Broadly, work in the Classen lab explores how ecosystems function and how interactions, both biotic and abiotic, influence patterns and processes within and among ecosystems. The Classen lab works across scales from the micro (bacteria in plants) to the macro (regional carbon fluxes) as well as across diverse terrestrial ecosystems (forests, meadows, bogs, tropics, boreal, temperate) to inform predictions of how global changes will alter ecosystems. They work with an ever expanding group of national and international collaborators and use a combination of observations, experiments, and models to answer important ecological questions.