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Chelsea Wood is an Associate Professor in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington, where she also serves as Associate Director and Graduate Program Coordinator. Her research program explores the ecology of parasites and pathogens in a changing world, with a focus on understanding whether, how, and why parasite communities respond to human-driven environmental change in marine and freshwater ecosystems. She addresses these questions through historical ecology using parasitological dissection of natural history specimens, meta-analysis of existing literature, resurrection of unpublished datasets, and both natural and manipulative experiments in contemporary ecosystems. Her work has practical applications to conservation, marine production, aquaculture pest control, and human infectious diseases such as schistosomiasis.
Wood earned a bachelor’s degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Dartmouth College in 2006, graduating summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and with High Honors. She received her Ph.D. in Biology from Stanford University in 2013. Her prior professional experience includes serving as an Assistant Editor at Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment from 2006 to 2008, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder from 2013 to 2014, and a Fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan from 2014 to 2016. She has been recognized with an NSF CAREER Award for her research on time-traveling parasites and has contributed to public outreach, including a video on parasites nominated for a Northwest Emmy Award. Wood teaches courses including Parasite Ecology and Historical Ecology.
Explore how US colleges like Tufts, OSU, and UW are leading research on corkscrew seal deaths, parasites like Phocanema, and conservation impacts.
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