Songlin Fei—a quantitative ecologist specialized in forest ecology, invasion ecology, and geospatial analytics—joined the Purdue faculty in 2011. He received his PhD from Penn State University.
Dr. Fei’s forest ecology work includes impacts of climate change on forest dynamic and biodiversity-ecosystem function. In their 2017 Science Advances paper, for the first time, they provided empirical evidences of the divergent responses of deciduous and evergreen trees in response to climate change. It was highlighted by Nature and was the focus of stories of hundreds of international (e.g., German Public Radio, UK Daily Mail, China Xinhua News) and national (e.g., NPR Living on Earth, The Atlantic, The Associated Press) media. His research was ranked #59 in the top 100 science stories of 2017 by Discover magazine. Dr. Fei’s invasion ecology work has been well supported by NSF and well recognized by public media. For example, his 2019 PNAS paper on invasive pests was highlighted by Science, NBC News, and many other media. In 2018, Dr. Fei was invited to the Capitol Hill to showcase his research during the Ag Research Congressional Exhibition and Reception.
Dr. Fei is also leading the integrated digital forestry (iDiF) initiative, which aims to revolutionize forestry from labor intensive, manual methods to an effective, precise, digital system by testing and adopting existing digital tools and by developing new tools, algorithms, and platforms for precision forest management and for public health improvement and mitigation.