Dr. Diana Wall is Director of the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, an international ecosystem research center, and Associate Dean for Research, College of Natural Resources at Colorado State University. Her research addresses the importance of soil biodiversity for ecosystems and society. Specifically, she investigates how soil biodiversity contributes to healthy, productive soils and the consequences of human activities on soil sustainability. Dr. Wall studies the diverse invertebrate group, soil nematodes, in ecosystems of varying land uses, including agriculture. She is currently assessing how soil warming changes soil biological diversity and ecology in the Antarctic Dry Valleys. Other projects include nematode disease of alfalfa and the effect of elevated CO2 on soil organisms and ecosystem functioning in the Colorado shortgrass steppe. Dr. Wall leads an international research collaboration to determine how changes in vegetation influence soil biodiversity and ecosystem processes. She promotes an integrated research approach to understanding ecosystems and solving environmental problems.

Dr. Wall is engaged in a wide array of professional service and public outreach activities to organize scientific research and communicate its importance to society. She chairs the DIVERSITAS-International Biodiversity Observation Year-2001, a program to demonstrate the importance of biodiversity to the future of our planet. Dr. Wall also chairs the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment-Committee on Soil and Sediment Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning. She is currently President of the Ecological Society of America and has served as President of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the Intersociety Consortium for Plant Protection, and the Society of Nematologists. Dr. Wall is a Fellow of the Society of Nematologists and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, was a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California Bodega Marine Laboratory and was recently selected as an Aldo Leopold Leadership Fellow. Dr. Wall has served as a chair or member of numerous scientific national and international committees and boards including the National Research Council (NRC) US National Committee for Soil Science and the NRC Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology. She has also served on governmental committees, such as the NASA Planetary Protection Task Force and panels for the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Wall regularly presents invited lectures on topics such as the Antarctica ecosystems, the underground biological world, benefits of integrated research, women in science, and science education. Her research has been widely featured in newspapers, magazines, radio and television, for instance, the New York Times, National Geographic magazine, and PBS TV shows such as Horizons and Discovery.

Dr. Wall has authored more than 80 refereed scientific papers and numerous other articles and reports, and served on several editorial boards. She was educated at the University of Kentucky, Lexington (B.A., biology and Ph.D., plant pathology). Dr. Wall taught at California State University, Fresno, and has been Associate Program Director for Ecology at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C. Dr. Wall was Professor, Department of Nematology, University of California, Riverside, before assuming her current position at Colorado State University in 1993.