Rate My Professor Travis Huxman

Travis Huxman is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the Charlie Dunlop School of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. He also serves as Director of the Center for Environmental Biology and Director of the Steele/Burnand Anza-Borrego Desert Research Center. Huxman earned a B.S. in Biology in 1993 and an M.S. in Biology in 1996 from California State University, San Bernardino, and a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences in 2000 from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Following a postdoctoral position in Environmental, Population and Organismic Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder from 2000 to 2001, he joined the University of Arizona as Assistant Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in 2001, advancing to Associate Professor and then Professor by 2010. During his tenure at Arizona until 2012, he held key administrative roles including Director of Biosphere 2 and B2 Earthscience from 2007 to 2012, Director of UA Science: Flandrau from 2010 to 2012, and Co-Director of the Arizona Center for STEM Teachers from 2009 to 2012. He joined UC Irvine in 2012.

Huxman is a physiological ecologist whose research focuses on plant physiological ecology, the evolution of functional traits in plants, impacts of climate change on ecosystems, desert biology, global change biology, ecohydrology, and ecosystem ecology. He examines plant-mediated processes from cellular to landscape scales, with emphasis on climate-ecosystem interactions and carbon-water cycle coupling in arid landscapes. His highly cited publications include "Convergence across biomes to a common rain-use efficiency" (Nature, 2004), "Precipitation pulses and carbon fluxes in semiarid and arid ecosystems" (Oecologia, 2004), "Temperature sensitivity of drought-induced tree mortality portends increased regional die-off under global-change-type drought" (PNAS, 2009), and "A multi-species synthesis of physiological mechanisms in drought-induced tree mortality" (Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2017). Huxman has been elected a Fellow of the Ecological Society of America (2017) for contributions to plant ecophysiology, functional traits, climate change effects, restoration, and conservation, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2020) for work in physiological plant ecology under global change. Other honors include the Distinguished Alumnus Award from California State University, San Bernardino (2004) and the UNLV Foundation Dissertation Research Excellence Award (2000).