Meet Stephanie Hampton

Aquatic ecologist and Tyler Prize Executive Committee Member Stephanie Hampton talks to us about big, blue lakes, the challenges of leadership and what has surprised her in joining the Tyler Prize.

I work on the ‘big, blue lakes of the world’. Big, naturally nutrient poor lakes, from Lake Baikal in Siberia to other large blue lakes in the western U.S. I also work on winter ecology.

I’m just about to go into a new role. I’ll be a Professor in the Environmental Science and Policy department at UC Davis, and Director of the Tahoe Environmental Research Center up at Lake Tahoe. I’m really excited.

Lake Tahoe is one of the most beautiful, epic places in the world. The lake is famously blue and clear.

One of the most challenging things in my field is that climate change is exacerbating a lot of other environmental stewardship challenges.

I think a lot of people feel a bit powerless in the face of climate change. In the short term it is worth us focusing on those things that we can control or understand on shorter time scales. So that if we know that an ecosystem is already stressed, then we can focus on looking at what we can do about stressors more under our control to keep our ecosystems healthy for longer.

I really appreciate the niche that the Tyler Prize has: it's about the application of very sound, novel, groundbreaking science. There are so many well deserved prizes for novel science and for environmental conservation, but the Tyler Prize is unique in that it is celebrating the people and organizations who are right at the nexus of the two. It feels really  motivational that you can be involved in novel groundbreaking science that is offering solutions to some of our major environmental issues.

I'm really favorably impressed by the depth of conversations that we at the Tyler Prize Executive Committee have about people's research and what it means in the world. It is quite humbling to read all of these applications.

I don't know how many people, when they see a prize announcement like this, think of all the hours the committee spends reading about this research (!) but we’re just so inspired by people who have really put an incredible amount of work into things that are good for the environment.

I think that there's a civil service element to leadership and I don't know if everyone sees that part of leadership. That's certainly the way that I look at it.

I'm community-oriented, that's really the thing that drives my affinity with leadership positions. Whenever I'm in a community, I'm always looking for ways to make it better, to make it stronger and to help people to achieve their best.

I think people would be surprised with fresh water at how much microscopic activity drives water quality. I think that is a really under-appreciated aspect of freshwater sciences: that you turn on the tap and the water comes out but, at every point in the process, from the moment that that water falls in the mountains to the moment that it comes out of the faucet, there's a whole biological story at each step along that path.

Now that more people are thinking about their microbiome and thinking about how much all of our microbes all over our bodies are indispensable for functioning, I think it becomes a little more natural for people to start thinking about how those microbes are actually helping to make our water clean as well.

When I was a child, I wanted to be a writer. As a scientist, in a way I’ve achieved that dream. I’ve had the chance to write nearly one hundred pieces of work. My job has all the international adventure that I would have thought a writer would experience.

Stephanie Hampton is President of the Ecological Society of America and Deputy Director of Carnegie Science Division of Biosphere Sciences and Engineering. In March 2025, she will be the Director of the Tahoe Environmental Research Center and faculty in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at UC Davis.