James Elser

Director of the Sustainable Phosphorus Alliance (SPA), United states

James Elser is Director of the Sustainable Phosphorus Alliance (SPA) at Arizona State University as well as Bierman Professor of Ecology and Director of the Flathead Lake Biological of the University of Montana. Trained as a limnologist, Dr Elser is best known for his work in studying the cycling and impacts of limiting nutrients, such as phosphorus, in ecosystems and, most recently, in leading interdisciplinary efforts to advance phosphorus sustainability to protect water quality while assuring sustained access to phosphorus for food production. Author / coauthor of more than 290 peer-reviewed publications, Dr Elser has also co-edited the book Phosphorus, Food, and Our Future and co-authored the book Phosphorus: Past and Future, both published by Oxford University Press. In recognition of his research accomplishments, in 2012 he received the G.E. Hutchinson Award of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO), the world's largest scientific association dedicated to aquatic sciences. Dr Elser was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, 2008), and elected as a foreign member of the Norwegian Academy of Arts and Sciences (2013). In 2019 he was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences. Dr Elser earned a PhD degree at the University of California (Davis), an MS degree at the University of Tennessee, and a BS degree at the University of Notre Dame.