Elizabeth Ainsworth

Biosketch

Lisa Ainsworth is a plant physiologist recognized for her work on crop responses to global atmospheric change. She is known particularly for her experimental studies and quantitative syntheses of crop responses to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide and ozone concentrations. Ainsworth was born in Springfield, Illinois and grew up in Mason City, Illinois. She graduated from University of California, Los Angeles with a degree in biology and from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign with a PhD in Crop Sciences. She was a Humboldt postdoctoral fellow at the Juelich Research Center in Germany and joined the USDA ARS Global Change and Photosynthesis Research Unit in 2005 where she now serves as Research Leader. She has held leadership positions in the American Society of Plant Biology (ASPB), the Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Research Interests

Research in Lisa Ainsworth's lab applies physiological, biochemical, and genomic tools to understand the mechanisms of plant responses to global atmospheric change and environmental stress. Current research quantifies genetic variation in response to elevated carbon dioxide and ozone concentrations among diverse crop lines in the field, identifies the genes and gene networks underpinning the ozone response in crops, and studies the interactions of drought, temperature, CO2 and ozone stress. Research also aims to identify genetic variation in photosynthesis at the leaf and canopy level in diverse food and energy crops.