External Faculty Profile
Name of Interviewee
Mary O'Connor, Professor in the Zoology Department and Director of the Biodiversity Research Centre at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada
1. How did you first get involved with SFI?
I organized a Gordon Conference (Unifying Ecology Across Scales) in 2018. This Gordon conference has always had a strong SFI presence and influence, and I included several SFI speakers as well. Following that, I was invited by one of them to visit and give a Colloquium and was then invited to apply to be external faculty.
2. What does SFI mean to you?
To me, SFI is community that values exciting and cutting-edge thinking, inclusivity and curiosity, and excellence in science and scholarship. For me, this is a community I connect with to refresh and recharge my own creativity and ‘thinking big’, where I feel encouraged and challenged in these pursuits, and feel in good company. I deeply value being part of this community.
3. How have you been involved with SFI recently?
I have co-led working groups (Scaling in Biology and Theory of Genetics), participated in working groups (Regeneration and (Im)mortality), and given guest lectures in GAINS and Complexity Summer School.
4. What are you working on now?
I am now working on understanding regime shift in a social-ecological coastal marine system and exploring the general features of this transition in terms of alternate stable states — this is an idea that was seeded in conversation with SFI external faculty at the GAINS school last summer!