Beth Polidoro

Beth Polidoro is an Associate Professor of Environmental Chemistry and Aquatic Conservation in the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences at Arizona State University. She also serves as Associate Director of Biodiversity Assessment in the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes, which is jointly housed in the School of Life Sciences and the Global Institute of Sustainability. Her primary research interests are in risk assessment and applied toxicology within the context of marine and freshwater biodiversity conservation, human health and international development.

Dr. Polidoro has a broad background in the marine, chemical and environmental sciences. Before to coming to ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences in 2012, she was a Senior Research Associate with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), where she worked with scientists around the globe to quantify the impacts of anthropogenic threats on more than 20,000 marine species for inclusion on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Currently, she works on various marine and freshwater conservation initiatives and risk assessments in the United States, Latin America, Asia and Oceania. Her current research projects involve the development of ecological and public health risk assessments for microplastics and other contaminants in aquatic environments, pollution vulnerability indices for marine biodiversity, and new methodologies to detect and assess the impacts of pollution and other threats to marine ecosystems across the globe. She also supports a long-term monitoring project for microplastics and other pollutants in aquatic resources and recreationally-caught fishes in metro-Phoenix.