Rate My Professor Alonso Favela

Alonso Favela is an Assistant Professor in the School of Plant Sciences at the University of Arizona, where he is also appointed as Assistant Professor in the Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Ecosystem Genomics and serves as a member of the Graduate Faculty. He earned a B.S. in Biology from the University of Arizona and a Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Following his Ph.D., Favela completed postdoctoral training as a USDA NIFA Postdoctoral Researcher in Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and as an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in Biology, Rules of Life at the University of California, Irvine. His research is situated within the Biodiversity & Evolutionary Biology group, investigating evolutionary patterns and processes in plant and microbial lineages using comparative genomics, phylogenetics, biodiversity informatics, lab and field experiments, and large-scale genomic analysis.

Favela's research specializations include microbial contributions to climate change resilience and sustainability, microbial ecology and environmental microbiology of agroecosystems, microbiome assembly and function of the plant rhizosphere, ecosystem cycling of carbon, nitrogen, and water, and genomic biodiversity and domestication. The Favela Lab works to understand mechanistic interactions between plants, microbiomes, and ecosystem processes to promote sustainable agriculture and combat climate change. His scholarly contributions feature prominently in leading journals. Key publications are "Lost and found: Rediscovering microbiome-associated phenotypes that reshape agricultural sustainability" (Science Advances, 2026), "The impact of microbial interactions on ecosystem function intensifies under stress" (Ecology Letters, 2024), "Maize germplasm chronosequence shows crop breeding history impacts recruitment of the rhizosphere microbiome" (The ISME Journal, 2021), "Genetic variation in Zea mays influences microbial nitrification and denitrification in conventional agroecosystems" (Plant and Soil, 2025), "N-Cycling Microbiome Recruitment Differences Between Modern and Wild Zea mays" (Phytobiomes Journal, 2022), and protocols including "Sampling and Analysis of the Maize Microbiome," "Manipulating the Maize (Zea mays) Microbiome," and "Sampling Root-Associated Microbiome Communities of Maize (Zea mays)" (Cold Spring Harbor Protocols, 2025).