Robert Sterner's first visit to the rocky coast of Maine instilled a lifelong fascination with the layering and distributions of aquatic organisms — leaving no question that he would specialize in ecology as a biology undergraduate at the University of Illinois. (See CV)

The future limnologist studied zooplankton interactions as a PhD student at the University of Minnesota to help answer a puzzling question: could ecological effects between two species be measured across food webs? His work showed that the indirect effects of zooplankton eating algae — such as nutrient recycling — were at least as important to population dynamics as direct consumption.

Sterner says his excellent conceptual and theoretical training at Minnesota was matched by the experimental skill he encountered as a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Limnology in Plön, Germany. “I had never witnessed work being done at the scale or rigour being done there,” he says.

As an associate professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, Sterner received his first National Science Foundation (NSF) grant and stumbled upon an unexpected finding — that the nutrient content of algae determines how fast the herbivores that feed on them grow. He and his close colleague Jim Elser then, literally, wrote the book on quantitative nutrient relationships, otherwise known as ecological stoichiometry.

An unexpected opportunity at a research institute brought Sterner back to Minnesota as a professor. Five years later he was department head, but ultimately returned after four years to his first love: research.

In July, he will temporarily leave his own lab to provide direction for ecological research funding as director of NSF's Division of Environmental Biology, the largest US federal funder of ecological and environmental biology research. With climate change increasingly prominent on the political agenda, Sterner says it's important to demonstrate that environmental biology is a big part of global change research. “The public may not think of it in these terms, but they care whether ecosystems remain intact,” he says.

Alan Tessier, acting deputy director for the division, likes the way that Sterner's research has ranged from evolution to ecosystem questions in freshwater and oceans. Sterner's broad background, says Tessier, gives him the perspective necessary to make interdisciplinary linkages, especially as ecology transforms into a more quantitative science.