Jan Salick
Jan Salick is an American botanist who researches the interaction between humans and plants (ethnobotany) and conservation biology. Her specialisms include alpine environments, climate change, indigenous peoples and traditional knowledge. She is a past-president of the Society for Economic Botany and holds their Distinguished Economic Botanist award. She is also Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and received the Fairchild Medal for Plant Exploration. In 2019 she retired as Senior Curator of Ethnobotany at the Missouri Botanical Garden, and now has emerita status. Education Salick gained her BA at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1973 and her MS from Duke University in 1977, both in biology. Her PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology was from Cornell University in 1983, with her dissertation, on the crop plant, cassava (Manihot esculenta), entitled "Agroecology of the Cassava Lacebug". Career and research Salick worked at the New York Botanical Garden (1983–89), rising to assistant curator. She then joined the Department of Plant Biology at Ohio University (1989–2000) as assistant and then associate professor of tropical ecology and ethnobotany. She has since been Curator and Senior Curator of Ethnobotany at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, and is also an