David Ackerly is the Dean of the Rausser College of Natural Resources and has a joint appointment in the departments of Integrative Biology and Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California Berkeley. Current research in his lab examines drought tolerance of native tree species, potential impacts of climate change on plant communities, and post-fire forest dynamics at sites that burned in the 2017 and 2019 northern California wildfires. His research is used to inform strategies of biodiversity conservation in the face of climate change, with a focus on California parks and open space. Ackerly received his B.A. in Biological Sciences from Yale University in 1984 and his Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University in 1993. He taught at Stanford from 1996-2004 and joined the faculty at UC Berkeley in 2005.