Nina Overgaard Therkildsen

Nina Overgaard Therkildsen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS). Her research focuses on understanding species adaptation to environmental changes, particularly in marine and anadromous fish, using high-throughput genomic tools. She explores genetic variation, rapid evolution, and conservation strategies for sustainable fisheries management.

Education: Ph.D. in Population Genetics from Technical University of Denmark (2012), M.Sc. in Biology from University of Copenhagen (2009), B.A. in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic, Maine (2005).

Key research interests include population genomics, molecular ecology, and leveraging genomic data for conservation. Recent work highlights the impacts of climate change, overfishing, and dam infrastructure on species adaptation. She has published extensively on topics like genomic adaptation in Atlantic silversides and cod, and the implications of fisheries-induced evolution.

Awards: 2021 CALS Young Faculty Teaching Award. Courses taught include Molecular Tools for Conservation, Reproducible Data Science in R, and Current Topics in Molecular Ecology.

Her lab, the Therkildsen Lab, emphasizes collaborative, open-data approaches and integrates genomic tools with ecological and evolutionary questions. Research spans from genomic analysis of invasive species to biodiversity monitoring in urban seafood markets.