Dr. Barbara Bedford is a senior research associate in the Department of Natural Resources of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University, and is director of the Ecosystems Research Center there. She earned her MS and Ph.D. in land resources from the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Dr. Bedford engages in cutting-edge and widely published research on landscape-level approaches to wetland science and management, focusing on the importance of regional hydrology and biodiversity in wetland systems. She excels at integrating her research with her teaching, allowing students to gain first-hand experience with the practice of wetland science and understand pressing wetland research questions. The college awarded Dr. Bedford its Young Faculty Teaching Excellence Award for her impact on students.
A committed member of the scientific community, Dr. Bedford advocates for the use of sound science in decisionmaking by serving on numerous review and advisory committees, including the National Research Council Committee on Restoration of the Greater Everglades Ecosystem and the advisory board of the Smithsonian Institution Environmental Research Center.
She resides in Ithaca with her husband Chuck Geisler and their daughter Kate.