Christina Richards

Associate Professor

Christina Richards is an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of South Florida. Her work has largely been focused on understanding the mechanisms of response to challenging and changing environmental conditions. She applies principles of ecology & evolution with genomics approaches to both global change biology in natural ecosystems and in to understanding cancer. Before joining USF as an Assistant Professor in 2009, she received her PhD from the University of Georgia in 2004 and worked as a postdoctoral associate at Stony Brook University and New York University. At USF, she has been engaged in public outreach through organizing annual Darwin Days events in collaboration with faculty and students across diverse disciplines and the Executive Director of Science in the Hillsborough County Public Schools, Mr. Larry Plank. Dr. Richards is also actively involved in Diversity Equity and Inclusion initiatives on campus serving as co-chair of her department's Anti-Racism and Equity Committee and as a member of the College of Arts and Sciences Diversity Committee. Most recently, she was sponsored by the Humanities Institute along with Adriana Novoa (History), Alex Levine (Philosophy) and Lorena Madrigal (Anthropology) in their Faculty Fellowship Program to develop a series of cross- disciplinary courses that address institutional racism and other forms of discrimination in academia. From 2019-2022, she worked as a laureate of the German MOPGA-GRI program at University Tbingen in Germany on the project, "Genomics and Epigenomics of Plant Invasion". In addition to building a global team of researchers to investigate the invasive Japanese knotweed, she has worked with a broad range of researchers to address the complex problems of global change and improve communication to the public.

Earned Awards

AWARD

YEAR AWARDED