Endara Burbano María-José

María-José Endara Burbano is an associate professor at the Centro para la Investigación de la Biodiversidad y Cambio Climático, Universidad Tecnológica Indoamérica (UTI), Ecuador. She earned her PhD in biology (2015) from the University of Utah, USA. She is an evolutionary biologist whose accomplishments have helped redefine textbook concepts in the field of plant-insect interactions and evolution. Endara's research proved that interactions between plants and its herbivores are not reciprocal, but asymmetric. Her studies brought to a new identification method for tropical plants based on metabolomics, or “chemocoding”. She published her studies in peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Ecology, New Phytologist, PNAS, Science. Endara is a member of the Asociación Latinoamericana de Botánica; the Ecological Society of America; the Association of Tropical Biology and Conservation; and the International Society of Chemical Ecology. Among her most recent awards: the Achievement Award, from UTI (2018); the F1000 recommendation of first-author paper (2017); and the Runner-up 2015 OTS (Organization for Tropical Studies) Outstanding Student Paper Award (2015).