L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science - Dr. Joanna (Joey) Bernhardt
2020

Dr. Joey Bernhardt is currently a Hutchinson Postdoctoral Fellow working in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University. She was previously a Nereus Postdoctoral Fellow at Eawag and the Department of Biology at McGill University. She completed her PhD in the O’Connor Lab at the Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of British Columbia.

Her research addresses how flows of energy and materials at the level of the individual cascade up to shape populations over gradients of temperature and resource supply. Dr. Bernhardt combines theory, experiments and synthesis to study how temperature-dependent metabolism mediates population and community dynamics in aquatic ecosystems.

She addresses a longstanding challenge in ecology – to develop a mechanistic understanding of the distribution and diversity of life on Earth. Understanding patterns of species abundance and distribution now and into the future remains a challenge because the variety of biological responses to environmental variation at multiple scales complicates ecological predictions. A solution to this challenge lies in harnessing our understanding of the predictable effects of temperature and energy supply on metabolism — a process common to all of life.

In parallel with her research, Dr. Bernhardt strives to share her science and engage with policymakers, coastal communities, and the public. She has collaborated with The West Coast Aquatic Management Board and the Tsawalk Partnership, a coastal planning initiative created to ensure the sustainability of marine ecosystems on the West Coast of Vancouver Island (WCVI) for future generations. She has worked with the marine spatial planning team of WCA, the Natural Capital Project and local First Nations to inform their marine plan by mapping and modeling ecosystem services, bringing science to the resolution of conflicts among different interests, and making implicit decisions explicit.