The Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont (UVM) welcomes Dr. Mindy Morales-Williams as a new Assistant Professor in Limnology. Her research expertise includes biogeochemical nutrient cycling, algal and microbial ecology, and harmful phytoplankton blooms in freshwater and coastal systems.

“We are pleased to welcome Dr. Mindy Morales-Williams to the faculty of the Rubenstein School,” said Dean Nancy Mathews. “Her expertise and training in limnology and in particular in biogeochemical carbon cycling, land-water linkages, phytoplankton ecology, and cyanobacteria blooms fits well with our research programs at the Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory and with the needs of the Lake Champlain Basin and the State of Vermont.”

Morales-Williams joined the School for the 2016-17 academic year as a Research Affiliate and begins her tenure track position in August 2017. At UVM, her research and teaching program will focus on nutrient flux and energy flow via land-water linkages and address the role of anthropogenic disturbance and climate change processes in the formation and maintenance of harmful cyanobacteria blooms. She will teach a limnology course in fall 2017.

“I am thrilled to join the Rubenstein School faculty,” shares Morales-Williams. “The School’s commitment to interdisciplinary research, community engagement, and sustainability at local and global scales make it a perfect fit for my research program. I look forward to joining the Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory team and building a strong, collaborative limnology research program on Lake Champlain and beyond.” 

She recently completed her doctoral degree in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology at Iowa State University. She  worked in Dr. John A. Downing’s limnology laboratory to investigate triggers of cyanobacterial dominance in lakes. For the past year, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota, where she investigated the impacts of terrestrial biodiversity on downstream aquatic microbial communities.

Morales-Williams received her B.S. degree in Biological Sciences at Florida International University in Miami in 2009 and her M.Sc. degree in Environmental and Life Science at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario in 2011. Her M.Sc. thesis focused on the effects of dissolved organic matter quality on trace metal biogeochemistry in shallow lakes.