Congratulations to Dr. Elena Irwin who is a recipient of the 2023 Distinguished University Professor Award. OAA awards the permanent, honorific title on a competitive basis to full tenure track professors who have truly exceptional records in teaching, research, scholarly or creative work, and in service. 

Elena Irwin’s research addresses the sustainability of human-natural systems at local and regional scales, focusing on land use and ecosystem services across urban and rural areas. She has been principal investigator or co-principal investigator on multiple research projects totaling over $19 million in funding, including funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the James S. McDonnell Foundation and other private and public sources.

In August 2021, she was appointed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator as an advisory member of the chartered Science Advisory Board as well as the Agricultural Science Committee. She is also an elected member of the Agriculture and Applied Economics Association executive board, and in 2022 was selected as a Fellow of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, the association’s highest honor. She has served on multiple national research committees with the National Research Council and NSF, including as a member of NSF’s Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education Subcommittee on Sustainable Urban Systems.

As faculty director and co-founder of Ohio State’s Sustainability Institute, she provides leadership to interdisciplinary sustainability research and teaching across the university, including cultivating campus-wide collaborative research and curriculum development efforts.

Irwin’s mentorship of students includes an emphasis on interdisciplinary research for which she is well-known, along with a focus on inclusion in all aspects of the grant writing and publication process and an overall dedication to their success, noted a nominator. In 2015, she was honored with the North American Colleges and Teachers of Agriculture Educator Award.