Rate Professor Mark Lara

Academic Profile

Academic Background: Ph.D., Plant Biology, University of California, Davis, 2012; M.S., Environmental Science, Ohio State University, 2008; B.S., Biology, University of New Mexico, 2005.

Research Interests: Arctic ecosystem dynamics, permafrost thaw, and carbon cycling, with a focus on remote sensing and geospatial modeling.

Appointments: Assistant Professor, Departments of Plant Biology and Geography, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2018–present; Affiliate, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, 2019–present.

Publications: Lead author of Permafrost Thaw Drives Landscape-Scale Carbon Loss (Nature Geoscience, 2020); contributor to The Conversation on permafrost collapse (2021).

Additional Contributions: Collaborator on NASA’s Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE); presented at American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, 2022.