Laurie Drinkwater is a professor in the School of Integrated Plant Science at Cornell University. She was raised in Key West, Florida and became interested in agriculture while attending graduate school at at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on improving the ecological efficiency and sustainability of agricultural systems by studying the mechanisms governing carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous biogeochemistry in agroecosystems at scales ranging from the rhizosphere, where plant–microbial interactions dominate, to the field and landscape scale, where human interventions strongly influence ecosystem processes. The purpose of this research is to improve the ecological efficiency and sustain-ability of agricultural systems. She teaches courses in agroecology, sustainability science and soil ecology.