Chaoqun Lu is a quantitative ecosystem ecologist and has broad interests in understanding, quantifying, and predicting how ecosystem processes and functions have responded and will respond to natural and human disturbances. She joined the department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology at Iowa State University in 2015. Her research uses a systems approach that incorporates process-based land ecosystem modeling, data-model assimilation, and geospatial analysis, to investigate a number of cutting-edge ecological questions. She has particular interest and passion in understanding the coupled carbon, nitrogen and water cycle in the earth system, land-atmosphere exchange of greenhouse gases, land-aquatic interaction and riverine export of carbon and nitrogen, and impacts of multi-factor global change on ecosystem.