Susana Magallon is an evolutionary biologists interested in the evolutionary processes that determine flowering plant distinctiveness and diversity, and their vast species richness. She has investigated the evolution of floral form, including the reconstruction of the ancestral flower and the floral morphological space through time and among lineages; the large scale dynamics of flowering plant diversification, including the timing of their origin and radiation and major speciation and extinction rate shifts; and Mesoamerican plant species richness, including the phylogenetic composition across different biomes and potential diversification correlates of emblematic species-rich groups.
Susana studied Biology at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She obtained a PhD at the University of Chicago, and postdoctoral training at the University of California, Davis. She took a position as senior research scientist at the Institute of Biology of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, which holds the National Biological Collections and Botanical Garden. Susana was appointed as Director in 2019, and from this position, she has worked to strenghten analytic and synthetic approaches to understand the macroevolutionary causes and process underlying biotic composition and diversity.
Since 2018, Susana has been an editor for the journal New Phytologist. She was President of the Society of Systematic Biologists (2017 – 2019). In 2022 she was elected as International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2023 as International Member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Professional position
- Senior Research Scientist, Department of Botany, National Autonomous University of Mexico
- Senior Research Scientist and Director, Institute of Biology, National Autonomous University of Mexico
