Alexandra D. Syphard is a senior research ecologist at the Conservation Biology Institute, an adjunct professor in Geography at San Diego State University, and a member of the California Wildfire Safety Advisory Board. She has spent more than two decades analyzing the ecological and social drivers and consequences of landscape change, particularly focusing on wildfire in California and other Mediterranean ecosystems. She investigates how change has occurred in the past, how it is likely to occur in the future, and how different policy or management alternatives may improve ecological and social well-being. Alexandra has concentrated intensely on wildfire risk to communities, investigating structure loss in wildfire, and identifying the best approaches for balancing fire risk reduction with biodiversity conservation. Her research also focuses on the interactions among wildfire patterns, fire-climate relationships, land use change and urban growth, vegetation dynamics, invasive species, and species’ range shifts.