Irina P. Panyushkina became a faculty member of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, the University of Arizona in 2006. Her doctoral and post-doctoral work at the Sukachev Institute of Forest, Russian Academy of Science. She is a Fulbright awardee from U.S. State Department and has developed and directed over a dozen research projects funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society and the CRDF Global. As an active member of the post-Soviet scientific community, Dr. Panyushkina facilitates collaborative research in Paleogeography and Dendrochronology between investigators of the United States and Europe throughout Russia and Kazakhstan. The majority of her projects investigate environmental change and climate variability with tree-ring proxies. Current research focuses on understanding past climate-human society interactions.