Elizabeth Ainsworth

Elizabeth Ainsworth is a Professor in the Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), affiliated with the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). She holds the Charles Adlai Ewing Chair and serves as Director of the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) project. Her research focuses on plant physiological and molecular responses to global climate change, particularly elevated CO₂ and ozone impacts on crops. Ainsworth leads interdisciplinary efforts to enhance crop resilience through genomic and systems biology approaches. She has been recognized with prestigious awards including the NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Sciences (2019) and AAAS Fellow status (2019).

• Education: B.S., UCLA; Ph.D., UIUC; Humboldt Fellowship at Juelich Research Center, Germany
• Key Research Themes: Photosynthesis, carbohydrate metabolism, climate change mitigation in agriculture
• Labs/Teams: RIPE Project, Center for Advanced Study