Dr. Sunshine Van Bael is an Associate Professor at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her research in community ecology focuses on plant-symbiont interactions in tropical forests, agroecosystems, and coastal wetlands. Her research and teaching in agroecosystems has included work in cacao, jatropha, banana, oil palm, coffee, agroforestry, and rice plantations. She is an author of more than 50 publications. Before her current position, she was an Associate Scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama. She also won Smithsonian Institute Research Fellowships for work with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center and STRI. She received a BA in Biology from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.