Isabel Patricia Montañez is the Chancellor’s Leadership Distinguished Professor in the department of earth and planetary sciences at University of California, Davis. As a sedimentary geochemist and paleoclimatologist, her research focuses on reconstructing past perturbations to global carbon cycling and regional climate change during periods of warming and major transitions. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has held several leadership positions including Director of the UC Davis Institute of the Environment, president of The Geological Society of America, and chair of the Division of Life and Earth Sciences at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.